New York Times

Where We Are

Where We Are is a visual series about young people coming of ange and the spaces where they create community.

Published by Loose Joints

Like a River

Daniel’s debut monograph continues the American artist’s long-term commitments to visualising the social and political rights of under-represented communities.

Initially from a background of social and medical anthropology, Lyons began working in the Amazon under the umbrella of Casa do Rio, a community-based organisation that celebrates and supports the cultural lives of teenagers and young people living in the depths of the Amazon.

Lyons particularly visualises and empowers the trans and queer communities of the region, exploring how deep indigenous traditions and modern identity politics meet in a celebratory, safe space, deep in the lush canopies and vegetation of the rainforest.

Lyons’ empowering images celebrate the perennial coming-of-age impulses to express and affirm one’s individuality, resilient here in the Amazon against a toxic mix of environmental degradation, violence, and discrimination.

As another generation passes through the quotidian rites and rituals of adolescence, Lyons asks: what sort of world will they inhabit, and how much autonomy will they have over it?

AnOther Magazine

Queer Joy

Daniel has spent years capturing the resilience of their queer friends around the world. In an exclusive photo series, they turn their lens to their chosen family in Los Angeles.

“So much of my work is about celebrating community and chosen family, being a queer person myself. You know, I literally would not be alive without my chosen family, without my community.” - Daniel Jack Lyons

J. Crew Campaign 

The American Landscape

When I think about the optimism of the American landscape, I think about when I left home to live on my own for the first time. That was the moment that I really felt the wide expanse of endless possibility that this country can offer. It’s also the moment that I met people who became family to me and changed my life forever. For me, this photo represents a moment when those kind of formative friendships are being forged and at an age when the world feels infinite.

 - Daniel Jack Lyons

The New York Times 

The New Punks of Los Angeles

In the city’s outlying areas, Latino teenagers are shaping a new music scene

Ukraine 

Displaced Youth

In recent years, huge numbers of Ukrainian citizens have fled the ongoing Russian military operations. Many displaced young adults with little work experience are finding themselves in resettlement sites in repurposed summer camp dormitories, juxtaposing the sites’ original purpose of leisure and amusement within the backdrop of uncertainty. 

The summer holiday ephemera in these sites are starkly contrasted by its occupants of youth living in limbo, showing how the universality of the yearnings of youth can thrive despite being amidst a site of conflict.