THE BIKERIDERS

Danny Lyon

6.5x 9.25 softcover book with 94 pages illustrated with black and white photographs. Introduction by Lyon. Interviews with bikeriders from taped interviews.

"The material in this book was collected between 1963 and 1967 in an attempt to record and glorify the life of the American bikerider. It is a personal record, dealing mostly with bikeriders whom I know and care for. If anything has guided this work beyond the facts of the worlds presented it is what I have come to believe is the spirit of the bikeriders: the spirit of the hand that twists open the throttle on the crackling engines of big bikes and rides them on racetracks or through traffic or, on occasion, into oblivion." -- from the Introduction.

In the niche of photo documentary that takes as its subject American subcultures, Lyon's 1968 book ranks as a true classic. It scores a rare PhotoBook trifecta by inclusion in THE BOOK OF 101 BOOKS [190-1], THE OPEN BOOK [236-7] and THE PHOTOBOOK: A HISTORY, VOL. I [256]. As Parr and Badger write, "The Bikeriders, an important and influential work, was one of the first books to bring a new genre to late twentieth century photography . . . Lyon photographed communities from the inside, making them an integral part of his life for the duration of the project . . . [it] represented a significant step in 1960s American photography, not only launching an important photographic career, but also giving a younger generation of photographers a spokesman...understanding instinctively not only their hopes and aspirations, but also why they were rebelling against all kinds of adult authority."

In 1965, Danny Lyon, a twenty-three-year-old veteran of the Southern civil rights movement, joined the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club. Riding a 650-cc Triumph and shooting with a Nikon Reflex and a Rolleiflex, he produced one of the seminal books of the 1960s: The Bikeriders. This work of realism read like fiction and presented a world as dangerous and romantic as the one depicted in films such as Easy Rider ­ released a year after the publication of The Bikeriders.

Includes extensive interviews with racers and outlaws ­ among the first books to use text from taped interviews ­ The Bikeriders is a vivid immersion in a culture that is now recognized as Œthe golden ageı of motorcyclists, a world that few outsiders knew intimately in its heyday. Documenting the romance, risk, and abandon of dirt track racing and motorcycle gang life, the stories and photographs in The Bikeriders are as dramatic and real today as they were when they were lived, decades ago.

Danny Lyonıs early documentary career was established and defined by his gritty photographer-as-participant approach. His first book, The Movement (1964), evolved from his experiences as a staff photographer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement. In the Bikeriders series (1968), Lyon rode and lived with the bikers he photographed. Lyonıs work belies the standard detachment of documentary humanism and objectivism in favor of a more complicated subjective involvement. Danny Lyonıs photojournalistic style is marked by its staunch pursuit of the unembellished moment. Clearing Land, Ellis Unit, Texas, a picture of a prison work gang, is part of a series on prison life that later became the book Conversations with the Dead (1971). Continuing his interest in the communities that develop ­ voluntarily or otherwise ­ on the outskirts of mainstream society, Lyon photographed the daily routine and rituals that evolve in prison and within which issues of race, masculinity, and class coalesce.

Born in 1942 in Brooklyn, Danny Lyon received a BA from the University of Chicago in 1973. As a photographer and filmmaker, Lyon has shown insight into the worlds of those who live outside the mainstream of society. In 1967, for instance he was given unrestricted permission to photograph the lives of convicts in Texas prisons, resulting in the portfolio Conversations with the Dead (1971). His films include Little Boy (1977), Los Niños Abandonados (1975), and Social Sciences 127 (1969). Lyonıs work has been frequently exhibited and collected; he is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts grants in both film and photography.

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