It is one thing to read about the disgrace of American penology, and quite another to see it for yourself. In 1967, Danny Lyon turned his camera toward life in American prisons. "Conversations with the Dead" refelects fourteen months he spent looking and listening inside six Texas penitentiaries. Free to enter the prisons at any time of day or night, Lyon moved among the prisoners as they existed in isolation. He photographed men in their cells, in the fields, working, eating, daydreaming -passing so much time. Befriending them, he records the personal testimonies of their lives and the official documents which condemn them to living death.