Llanito, New Mexico, 1970
Vintage gelatin silver print
Image size: 6 ½ × 9 ¾ in
Framed size: 20 ¾ × 16 ¾ in
January 6, 2025
The dusty romanticism of this scene seems to literally depict life on society's margins. The young boy's makeshift basketball court clearly occupies a parcel on a far flung fringe of the United States, with the broken-down car giving the sense of a vehicle that went as far as it could go before it ran aground.
In the 1960s Danny Lyon gained a reputation for photojournalistic advocacy, seeking to portray the lives of people living outside society's mainstream, via work done as the first staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, two years spent as a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, and more than a year photographing within the Texas prison system. Lyon approached all these subjects in a participatory way, often befriending and living alongside them, as part of a generation of rule-breaking photographers whose work came to be known as New Journalism.
When this photo was taken in 1970, Danny Lyon had recently relocated to New Mexico from Texas, taking up residence in a sparsely populated section of Rio Grande Valley. Homes like this one in the area often laid on incorporated land and housed migrant workers brought to the Albuquerque Basin thanks to the region’s long history of agricultural production. This part of the country, where Lyon continued to reside for decades to come, seems perfectly suited for a photographer who has always been determined to tread beyond the beaten path.
