One of the finest and most enterprising of American photographers, Danny Lyon has long devoted himself to chronicling some of the most marginalized and little-understood of American subcultures, from bikers in the Midwest and prison inmates in Texas, to Native-American communities throughout the U.S. In WILLIE, he revisits one of the subjects of his earlier film, LLANITO (1971). Shifting between black-and-white images from Willie Jaramillo’s childhood and color footage of him as a young man, Danny and Nancy Lyon create a realistic and unsentimental film about the circumstances of Willie’s life both in and out of New Mexico prisons. The filmmakers use this form less to focus attention on what might be construed too simplistically as the childhood roots of his later criminal behavior, and more to lend ambiguity to his story, for Willie is not a criminal in the common sense of the word. (Text courtesy of Anthology Film Archives)
Q&A with Danny Lyon following screening. Danny Lyon: The Texas Prison Photographs on display at Howard Greenberg Gallery from 12/5-1/31.
“Lyon deftly blends footage of Jaramillo as an adult with scenes of his more carefree youth. The effect is powerful. One gets the sense of the ravages of time, coupled with a feel for the devastation wrought by a life wasted.” – Jon Bowman, The New Mexican
“Lyon’s films are humble and intensely personal works overswept by a sense of the depth and durability of the human spirit as observed during long moments that accrue and become years, in a practice constituting more than a style, but rather a whole system of ethics, a verité approach not to the cinematic act alone but to human beings themselves and the stories they tell.” – Harvard Film Archive
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