Cycling Cultures Research Project

Bike Portraits

This photographic series of people and their bicycles derive from a collage style by British artist David Hockney. It encompasses multiple images roughly pieced together to form a much larger impression. For this project its application begins to capture the relationship between the person and their bicycle and provides a brief glimpse into the larger socio-material and spatial ecology in which cycling practices take place.

The portraits are deliberately messy; with jagged edges, overlaps and slightly absurd buildings. The shape of each emerges in the making. This technique goes some way to replicate the virtue of the messy, complex and textured ethnographic experience. While a single image can feel limiting, these portraits (some of which are made of up to 60 images), go some way to suggest more of the textures of everyday cycling.

I am also attracted to Hockney’s images because, ‘the centre of the collage seems to move’ and ‘the eye looking seems to slip, to be unable to ‘fix’ on anything’ (Reinelt and Roach 1992:109). This fragmentation works because it is very much in keeping with the spirit of ethnographic activity and the essence of the cycling experience. I also regularly place myself in images, thereby contributing to the mess.