Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

DOCUMENTING THE NATURE OF HUMANITY FOR OVER 60 YEARS, PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILMMAKER DANNY LYON FOCUSES ON MARGINALIZED SUBJECTS SUCH AS THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, A MOTORCYCLE GANG, AND THE AMERICAN PRISON SYSTEM.

DURING DRAMATIC NIGHT- TIME DIVES, PHOTOGRAPHER LINDA IANNIELLO SPECIALIZES IN BLACKWATER PHOTOGRAPHY TO CAPTURE FASCINATING LIFEFORMS THAT DWELL IN THE DEEP SEA.

HAVING DRAWN EVERY COMIC BOOK CHARACTER IMAGINABLE IN HIS 45 YEARS IN THE BUSINESS, MARVEL COMIC ARTIST BOB LAYTON COLLABORATED ON THE REINVENTION OF THE SUPERHERO IRON MAN IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

SEEING HUMANITY [Music] >>Danny Lyon: I like being part of the scene or ingratiating myself with people, being friendly with them, being accepted so I can just kind of watch.

Watch another world that's different than mine, you know [Music] >>Danny: When you do that kind of Journalism you're a substitute for the for the public.

The intimacy of it lets you look at it and say, you know, "this is a real person, it's a real woman, this guy really died," and so that's all intentional and it's part of the power in it.

>>Danny: So I'm running and you'll probably want to use my footage in your film about me.

So, check this out.

I can play it too.

All right, okay, get that.

>>Faith Perez: What camera did you start with?

Like, what was your first camera?

>>Danny Lyon: The first camera I ever had yeah in my life?

>>Faith: Yeah.

>>Danny: When I went to Europe when I was 17, my dad was a German and he was into photography.

I bought a single lens reflex called it EXA.

That was my first camera but what's really kind of amazing is, I bought it in Munich, which was where Hitler came from and the first concentration camp is in a suburb of Munich and this was only like, it was 50, it's like 12 years after it was active and they were murdering people.

And we went out there on a bus and the first picture I ever took was, I published it too, it was a shoot, a tree where they shot people.

It had a sign in German saying that this is where they executed, and they had just opened it up as a kind of Museum.

You can still go there.

You know, I grew up with the media just like you and my media was Life magazine and three channels.

Three, and television was free, just came through the air you know, and I understood how powerful it was and I wanted to make an alternative media.

I wanted to destroy it.

>>Faith: What drew you to the SNCC?

>>Danny Lyon: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee >>Voice: that if they killed everybody in this house, there would be more nigros to rise up because the little children are singing now.

Freedom, freedom over me.

[Music] >>Danny: The movement was infectious, you know.

It was like the Mexican Revolution.

You really get caught up in it, you know, you go to a group and there's you know 20 other people there in this case they met in churches.

They sang songs and they are all worked up and they're breaking the law and they have a righteous cause.

[Singing: "No Segregation"] >>Danny: And once you were caught up in it you became like a soldier in an army and there was other people who were tougher and meaner and braver than you were.

I was lucky to be there.

It was a great moment in history.

I wasn't a young black from the south, I was an outsider you know and I got to participate in something really great you know it's not the only thing I would ever do in my life but I did it at the very beginning of my life.

[Music] >> Faith Perez: And then you ended up in the Chicago Outlaw motorcycle club?

>> Danny Lyon: Yeah, that was weird wasn't it?

I was looking for a subject that I thought would be great in photography and the bikers were like, what they looked like was half the trip, you know.

They had a way to dress and looking and then you know they did crazy and dangerous stuff and I loved that and I love motorcycles.

I remember someone in the University saying like, "how can you talk to people like that?"

Meaning, "how can you associate with someone who's dirty" or they were like the other you know well that was part of the attraction but it was also part of the point socially.

[Music] >> Danny: My parents were immigrants.

I talk about it all the time.

Both my parents came from another country.

Both of them came as kind of different kinds of political refugees really.

You know, I remember them saying that America was a classless society but that wasn't really true because even though, supposedly we have this big middle class, people did look down on these people because they weren't educated, and the bike riders was my way of rubbing their noses in it.

[Music] >> Faith: Why did you decide to go inside the Texas prisons?

>>Danny: Well, you know, it's remarkable how many people you can talk to who have a relative in prison but that wasn't true of me I didn't know any about prisons.

[Music] [Music] >>Danny: It was a forbidden world and it was, it was a world you didn't see in the press ever and no one ever photographed in it so, that made it very attractive.

[Music] >>Danny: I was 26 years old.

I was an ex-civil rights worker I was a pothead.

I cleaned myself up and I walked up to the gate and opened up and I was inside the yard of a Penitentiary that that was like you know 150 years old.

I couldn't believe it.

They'd let me in a maximum security unit.

[Music] >> Danny: On an intellectual level, as an artist, I wanted to destroy prisons, you know, if we locked up a bear in a zoo and put them in the space that you put one of these guys for their life, there would be protests all around the world, that you can't treat a bear that way, that's what a prison is and the sentences get longer and longer and longer.

>> Prisoner 1: I saw them execute the first one and then they did a double execution and then they did a couple of triple executions and I think that saves money when they do it like that.

>>Prisoner 2: Ricky was so mentally retarded, and so childlike, that he always saved his dessert before he went to bed at night so when he ate his last meal, he saved his dessert because he thought he was going somewhere to like a picnic or a carnival or something some kind of uh special thing and that he could when he got back he would be able to eat his dessert so he left his dessert that night.

>>Danny Lyon: Yeah people didn't care about this stuff then and I think that's was part of my motivation, I mean, I was trying to change people to somehow affect them that that they go in there and they look at this stuff and some a light bulb goes off or somehow they think a little differently about the world.

[Music] >>Danny: I think I'm more interested in changing people's consciousness because I think the only thing that'll change society is when people change and that's a hard thing to do.

[Music] DIVE INTO THE UNKNOWN People are in awe at what's out there, I think.

And I think they're also in awe at how small it is.

Everything is, the vast majority is an inch or smaller, and so it's like eye- opening, the detail and the the fins these thing have, and the filaments and everything, and how the gorgeous colors.

Some of them have just stunning colors and you wonder why.

There's a sea butterfly that has appendages that look like leaves.

Absolutely like leaves.

So things like that I think are fascinating, and you get people thinking about stuff like that.

And that plus the pretty pictures helps.

My name is Linda Ianello.

I'm an underwater photographer.

I've been diving for over 30 years, taking pictures.

I am also the co-author of "Blackwater Creatures," which is a book devoted to the subjects found on blackwater dives in southeast Florida.

Myself and Susan Mears have developed this book for educational purposes so people doing these dives will understand and learn about what they're seeing.

I usually say it's the most challenging underwater photography there is.

Because of that, you can't stay in one position.

Your subject is constantly moving.

They don't wanna be seen.

So you come along with these big lights shining on them, and they may book to the surface or book to the bottom, and they very seldom freeze.

So, you're chasing the subject, and basically what I end up doing is shooting probably 20 or 30 shots until I lose it.

Every one of these has eyes.

And it took me a while to realize that, oh, there's eyes, and if you're shooting something with eyes you should get the eyes in focus.

Well, I swear these little guys know, and you shine your lights on them and they turn their back.

And they're very small.

The shell portion, the center portion, is gonna be like the size of your little fingernail.

So it's really hard to know if you're shooting the eyes or the butt.

So this is another example where you take a whole bunch of shots and try for the eyes and try to get them in focus and do your best.

>>Voice: Alright, Linda's got her camera.

She's ready, she's going, Linda is in!

These creatures are small.

They're one inch or less.

A lot of them are transparent, so they need a lot of light to take the pictures, and to focus.

They're hard to focus.

So I'm hunting with those lights and using them to focus.

I just focus on the stuff that's in front of me, 'cause I shoot everything.

I'm shooting all of the little creatures I can find.

It's not like muck diving where the subject's gonna sit there and let you take your pictures.

These subjects are moving constantly.

It's gorgeous.

They're just gorgeous.

So there is a definitely a degree of art in these subjects.

The scientists have been a tremendous help, because we started out, we didn't know anything about these, and there were no books on blackwater subjects, except for a few scientific ones were drawings, and it's very hard to correlate a drawing to a live animal.

Couple of the fish scientists started telling us what they were, and three or four of them will start discussions and then eventually someone would say, okay, this is a species.

So it evolved with tremendous help from the scientists.

And then once we got a couple years into it, started communicating directly with scientists, and I provide images for scientific papers.

Anybody that wants any of my images for papers or publications, whatever.

So we built up this rapport with fish scientists and a lot of gelatinous zooplankton people.

So we've got pretty good IDs on those kinds of things.

My whole goal is to help science.

The other thing is, is make people aware of this environment, because we don't know what's there, and it all has a purpose.

From the very beginning I wanted to know what I was shooting, and I started keeping pretty good records of everything that the scientists were telling us so that I would know, looking back, what that was and who said it, and et cetera.

When we were doing these dives about a year or two in, people were coming and doing the dives, and they were excited, but they get back on the boat, and they say, "I don't know what any of it was.

"I saw all these things but I don't know what it was."

And so we started thinking, okay, we're starting to build up enough images and enough information that we could put together a book that would help.

And specifically for our area, it's strictly things found here.

And I would write up little information about things.

So I didn't want just pictures.

I wanted information and education.

So the more attention I paid to these, I started to build up this resource.

And so we thought, okay, we can do this, we can do this.

And it's worked out.

I think it's helped a lot of people, new people, and it's helped people maintain their interest, that, yes, they can learn about these subjects.

And it's fun on the boat, too, now, that people come up from a dive and I talk to them and I say, "What did you see?

"This is a test, what did you see?"

And we'd go get the book and figure it out.

So it's been very challenging, but it's been productive, and I think hopefully it served a purpose.

RECREATING A HERO >>BOB: I've written and drawn about every comic book character imaginable in my 45 years in the business.

It'd be easier for you to try to find what characters I haven't done.

Most of all, I'm known for the reinvention of Iron Man.

So when I heard that Marvel was going to kick off their entire cinematic universe with my version of that character, it was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.

In 2007, I was asked by Marvel Studios to come out and do the narrative for the DVDs.

It occurred to me while I was out there that I had climbed every mountain, that I'd done everything in comics.

Suddenly the whole cinematic world opened up to me, and that just seemed like such an adventure and a chance to watch my characters breathe and talk and move.

So I moved to Hollywood, and I learned the language and the customs of Hollywood.

After about eight or nine years in Hollywood, I decided to move back to Florida.

I really wanted to try to work outside the system, and at the same time I realized I was missing my grandchildren's childhood, and they lived here in Riverview, so I wanted some time with them.

So I started my own production company.

After I moved back here, I met Tyler Martinolich, the Tampa Bay film commissioner.

Tyler kind of recruited me to help bring more attention and interest financially to making films and television in Florida.

I've always contended that Florida is a wonderful place to film because of, one, you have an amazing amount of talent here, you think of what comes out of Ringling College, of variety of topography here.

We worked together to promote film in Florida, lobby the State House in Tallahassee.

I said, "The one thing I have learned in all my years in traveling around the world is everybody has a Marvel fan in their family."

And so I said, "I'm gonna take a lot of free posters."

Earlier this summer, Tyler came to me and said that he had approached Mayor Jane Castor about having an Iron Man Day and to celebrate what I've done and what I brought here to the city and to the state.

So Mayor Jane Castor proclaimed August 4th Bob Layton Day.

So I was just amazed at how this whole thing snowballed into this huge event with radio shows and television shows and signings and screenings of the movie.

And when Commissioner Ken Hagan gave me this actual proclamation.

"Ken, thank you so much!"

It was like very, very touching.

So Tyler asked me to come up to his office one day and to bring some of my artwork that we could display at the Scarfone Gallery, and when I got up there, I found out what his master plan was.

>>BASK: Tyler reached out to me and said he had a pretty special project that he wanted me to collaborate on or get my input, and that's all he said.

>>BOB: Another local artist who had worked and had a connection with Iron Man was Bask, who lives in St. Pete.

>>BASK: We're sitting at the table, introduced to the group, but I'm also learning that this is the project.

It's to collaborate with Bob Layton.

>>BOB: "Bask did all the paintings in Iron Man 3, So we are actually Iron brothers."

>>BASK: 2012, I get a phone call, and he was like, "Hey, Robert Downey Jr. wants your art in 'Iron Man 3.'"

So immediately I was like.. [gasps] >>BOB: We began collaborating on some ideas for paintings that he could do based on my work.

Bask and I had similar backgrounds and similar problems that we had to deal with.

I grew up in the Midwest, and it was a difficult childhood because my mother had to raise five of us alone.

I learned to read on comics.

I bugged my sister Sue to teach me how to read.

I could tell what was happening in the stories 'cause the pictures connected one panel to another, but I didn't know what they were saying, and I was so curious.

>>BASK: Growing up in the Czech Republic, it's, you know, we lived in, under communist oppression, and it was it was pretty stifling.

I'm always the outcast, and I've always looked towards art to kind of help me through a lot of those moments.

>>BOB: I found that comic books were an incredible escape for me >>BASK: Started looking towards like art like as a go-to form of joy and therapy, a distraction, whatever it might be.

I didn't have that many friends growing up, so it was just kind of something, I like created my own worlds, my own places where I can go, sources of entertainment, essentially.

>>BOB: Thank goodness for Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and all these other characters that kind of kept me going.

>>BASK: When I was drawing violent comic books or doing graffiti, none of that made sense to my parents, but they were like, "We're gonna go all in and encourage him."

>>BOB: Eventually when I got into comics, I started my career at DC, and there I met David Michelinie, who was my writing partner.

I convinced him to jump ship and go back to Marvel, and they offered us three books that were in danger of cancellation, and that's how they tried out new talent.

We basically did a complete overhaul of the premise of "Iron Man," and at that particular time, the Betty Ford clinic had just opened up, and the people were talking openly about drug and alcoholism for the first time.

We wanted to give Tony an internal struggle.

>>BASK: "Demon in a Bottle," there is this real-world grounded element of it, and yeah, it's about a guy who is dressed up in a metal costume, and he's a billionaire.

Despite him having everything in the world that he wants, he still has this, this albatross around his neck that he just, is weighing him down and having him self- destruct from the inside.

>>BOB: And it occurred to us that this would be an interesting villain for Tony to have to struggle with.

>>BASK: Anybody who's ever had a vice that they were struggling with or something internal, it's like the battle of self vs self is always the hardest.

>>BOB: I was struggling with alcoholism myself, you know, 40-something years later, it was a cry for help.

>>BASK: Going through my own struggles with various things, various substances or drinking or partying too much.

As an adult, I got to truly appreciate how profound that was.

>>BOB: "Demon in a Bottle" was Robert Downey's, one of the reasons why he signed up to do "Iron Man."

>>BASK: Sometimes the message or what the artist is putting out there, things or thoughts or images that reflect a point in time in his life that he wants someone, he needs somebody to connect with that.

>>BOB: "In order for a story to really resonate, the conflict has to come from within the characters themselves."

>>BASK: It's truly something that I connected with.

>>BOB: I saw a new way to kind of interpret the old Iron Man through Bask's imagination.

"I don't know how you could the turn my little commercial art drawings into fine art.

That's amazing!"

>>BOB: Jocelyn, the curator, brought all this together because she figured out a way to bring comic books and fine art together in gallery in one showing.

It was an amazing experience.

It's something that I'm gonna remember always, you know?

It was taking something old out a new door.

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"UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING."

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.