on bicycles

This is less a project about telling a story as it is about seeing bicycles with fresh eyes. As an avid cyclist, I own several bikes, perform most of my own bike maintenance and repairs, and stare at every bike I see on the street.

These photographs represent a closer examination of this beautiful, two-wheeled machine. We have progressed to a point in bicycle history when nothing short of carbon fiber catches one's eye, but I hope that this project shows that that does not need to be the case. There's no question, in looking at these photographs, of what they show: taken from unique angles, these photographs focus on bicycles in ways that we're not used to seeing them.

With this project, then, I have taken something I know very well -- the bicycle -- and have told myself that there is more to see, more to know. I liken it to discovering in acquaintances, or even old friends, new qualities and details about their lives and beings, until now unknown. In those moments, we each realize that there is no end to what we might learn about the complexity of humans and the relationships in which we find ourselves.

So perhaps this project is the telling of a story: the story of my getting to know the bicycle anew.

See the slide show here.

See the album here.

These images -- a handful taken with black & white film, most digital -- form a final project I submitted last week for a photography course.