Danny Lyon is known for photographing people on society's margins and for his commitment to social justice and human rights. As the first photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s, he participated in the civil rights movement as both an activist and a photojournalist. In the mid-1960s, he joined the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club and spent two years travelling with and photographing bikers.
 
In 1967, recognising inequalities in the correctional system, Lyon drove from his home state of New York to Huntsville, Texas, to undertake what many consider his most powerful work. Granted full access by the director of the Texas Department of Corrections, he visited seven prisons: The Walls and Ramsey, housing the general population; Ferguson, for young prisoners; Goree, for women; Wynne, for older and mentally ill prisoners; Diagnosis, for new arrivals; and Ellis, for those considered most dangerous. His photographs document prisoners' daily lives, including regimented meals, brutal working conditions and degrading searches. In his own words, he sought “to make this picture of incarceration as distressing as it actually is”.