[4][5][6] In 1945 Lyons became interested in photography after viewing a darkroom demonstration and he began to photograph with a plastic Falcon camera while working in his family's glass and mirror business.
[6] In 1953 Lyons returned to the United States and worked for the Air Force as a staff news writer and public relations photographer in Marietta, Georgia.
He also studied photography and exhibition design with the artist John Wood who became his primary mentor and an influential force behind Lyons's creative practice.
[7][6] After graduating in 1957, Lyons began working for the George Eastman House as the director of public information and assistant editor of Image magazine.
Additionally, Lyons validated and defined the "snapshot aesthetic" in his exhibition "Toward a Social Landscape" in 1966 that included the work of Bruce Davidson, Lee Friedlander, Danny Lyon, Duane Michals and Garry Winogrand[8] and further explored the aesthetic in his lecture "Photography and the Picture Experience" regarding the snapshot as "authentic picture form."
[2] In 1962, "recognizing the growing importance of photography at museums and university art departments, he organized a conference for curators and teachers that evolved into the Society for Photographic Education.
[6] The Society for Photographic Education is a nonprofit membership organization that provides a forum for the discussion of photography and related media as a means of creative expression and cultural insight.
[13] Six of Lyons's photographs were also included in the exhibition The Sense of Abstraction in Contemporary Photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
This book is the first instance of Lyons's creative exploration of the extended meaning forged from reading his photographs as diptychs contained within a larger sequence.