“…the eye and the camera see more than the mind knows.” – Nathan Lyons
Among the founding members of the Society for Photographic Education, better known as SPE, as well as the founder of the Visual Studies Workshop, Nathan Lyons is one of those figures who has changed the course of modern photography. Much that has happened in the realm of contemporary image making is the direct result of Nathan’s influence on those who have followed his footsteps his students, his colleagues and his friends. A vast number of those people have become the leading curators, writers, photographers and educators of contemporary photography and visual culture.
Nathan Lyons newest book: “Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays,Lectures,and Interviews”
Edited by Jessica McDonald and published by the University of Texas Press, this new hardbound book contains several of Lyons unpublished lectures as well as interviews and essays by James Borcoman, Vicki Goldberg, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Adam Weinberg and others.
“Few people have had as much impact on American photography in the latter half of the twentieth century as Nathan Lyons. As a photographer, curator, theorist, and educator, Lyons has influenced generations of professionals in these fields. Beginning his career at the George Eastman House in 1957, Lyons became a vital supporter of contemporary photographers through a succession of significant exhibitions and publications, which, in turn, expanded the audience for photography that was “a unique and exacting means of isolating inner realities found in correspondence with the physical world.” For Lyons, photographic meaning is best discovered through groups of images called “sequences” rather than through the single image, and his important series of books using his own photography have explored this idea.” – David Coleman – Forward to Nathan Lyons Selected Essays, Lectures, and Interviews
“Nathan Lyons: Selected Essays,Lectures,and Interviews”
Like all those who journeyed through Visual Studies Workshop, I am proud to have Nathan as my teacher and as my friend. – John
