Danny Lyon, filmmaker and photographer, achieved recognition with his photo essays on motorcycle gangs, The Bikeriders, 1967, and Texas prison life, Conversations with the Dead, 1971. His photographs—a potent mix of empathy and raw-edged veracity—avoid documentary cliche and simple minded humanism.

Lyon’s recent photographs, which also appear in his book, The Paper Negative, 1980, are an apt though problematic coda to the past decade. During the 1970s the photographer moved away from the tight, project orientation of his earlier work. In the text to The Paper Negative, written in an autobiographical

In the late 1940s Max Yavno photographed San Francisco and Los Angeles, two cities in the midst of major physical and social changes. The New York born photographer, who had worked for the WPA and served as president of the Photo League, planned to photograph San Francisco’s diverse ethnic mix. However, on his first visit, he discovered the unique topography, architecture and climate, and chose instead to concentrate on the city’s physical appearance.

Yavno’s speciality was the expansive, panoramic view. He rendered the architecture as modular patterns of frame houses against one another. He