In the hot summer of 1972, photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon was taking pictures in South El Paso’s Second Ward.
Lyon was already established at this point, having received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for photography in 1969. Seemingly, the kids in the pictures could not have cared less about their role as subjects for a famous photojournalist. What Lyon captured was a neighborhood in the earliest stages of urban renewal and its local teenagers in the advanced stages of boredom.
Hanging in the front seat of a Tri Five Chevy or looking mean in an alley were not the only ways to spend time almost forty years ago, but they sure were good ones.
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![Portrait](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/3888253830_b4353aa67f_b.jpeg)
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images via The US National Archives