Today, we’re excited to present you with the most recent images straight from Daniel Kordan. You might remember his previous work documenting the stunning landscapes of Vietnam. This time, he takes us on another adventure, discovering Western Australia seen from an open-door airplane. Sounds interesting, right? If you’re not familiar with the incredible, out-of-this-world landscapes of this region, you should be even more intrigued.

We must say that the majority of the images captured by Daniel look more like abstract paintings than real places on our planet. Some shots resemble watercolor artwork, with colors flowing into one another, while others remind us of oil paint dried on canvas, full of cracks and amazing textures. It goes without saying, the collection you’re about to explore is truly inspirational and unique.

More info: Instagram | danielkordan.com

Ellen Wexler

Assistant Editor, Humanities

Danny Lyon considered himself a bikerider, but there were glaring differences between him and the members of the Chicago Outlaws, a notorious motorcycle club. They were blue-collar Midwesterners riding Harleys and living on the outskirts of society. Lyon was a college-educated photographer who rode a Triumph and toted around two cameras and a seven-pound tape recorder.

It was the mid-1960s, and Lyon was following in the footsteps of Hunter S. Thompson, the journalist who rode with—and wrote about—the Hells Angels around the same time. Lyon even sent a letter to Thompson, perhaps expecting encouragement from a like-minded chronicler. Instead, the writer advised Lyon to “get the hell out of that club. … I’ve seen the Angels work, and they scare the hell out of me.” Lyon bristled at this advice, which he later summed up thusly: “[Thompson] advised me not to join the Outlaws and to wear a helmet. I joined the club and seldom wore a helmet.”

Lyon documented the Outlaws for several years, but he was not an objective observer. When The Bikeriders, a collection of photographs and interviews, came out in 1968, Lyon—who had become a full member of the club in 1965—billed it as 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.”

Now, more than 50 years later, The Bikeriders forms the basis of a new movie adaptation of the same name. Directed by Jeff Nichols, the film uses verbatim quotes from Lyon’s interviews for around 70 percent of its dialogue. The plot, meanwhile, is a work of fiction created by weaving the interviews together.

The movie is concerned less with telling a true story than with capturing the feeling of freeways and freedom, of outlaws and open roads—what Lyon calls 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.”

Here’s what you need to know about The Bikeriders (both the book and the adaptation) as the film, which stars Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy, arrives in theaters in the United States on Friday.

The outlaw archetype

In 1957, about a decade before The Bikeriders, Jack Kerouac published On the Road, his famous chronicle of disillusioned, peripatetic young travelers wandering the country and searching for answers. One reviewer described Kerouac as a “kind of literary James Dean,” the actor responsible for a formidable percentage of the motorcycle’s cultural cachet.

Like many young men, Lyon, who was 15 when On the Road came out, was inspired by the book. In the summer of 1962, after wrapping up a semester at the University of Chicago, he asked friends to drop him off along Route 66, “the road Jack Kerouac used,” and hitchhiked to Cairo, Illinois, where he saw future congressman John Lewis speak and began photographing scenes from the civil rights movement. By 1964, he was back in Chicago, where he started planning The Bikeriders.

Around this time, Lyon wrote to a publisher about the project. When he revisited the letter many years later, he realized he came across as “a kind of crazy person who writes in this sub-Jack Kerouac-style prose about the open road and the freedom of being an outlaw,” as he told the Observer in 2014.

American motorcycle clubs were also fueled by this outlaw spirit. Their history stretches back to the end of World War II, when returning veterans—particularly those having trouble reintegrating into civilian life—began to form new groups. The lifestyle combined several values these former soldiers clung to: As Vox put it in 2015, “Nostalgia for the camaraderie and risk-taking of the war made the clubs’ focus on male bonding and dangerous activities like, say, riding motorcycles particularly attractive.”

Many such clubs were part of the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). Membership in the organization, which was founded in 1924 and still exists today, requires adherence to strict rules. Some clubs resisted these rules and formed without the group’s stamp of approval. As Lyon wrote in The Bikeriders, they “are so far in spirit from attitudes of the AMA that they neither want nor could receive AMA sanction. These are known as outlaw clubs.”

CAPTURING A CULTURE – EP04 DANNY LYON: OUTLAW BIKERS

Members of outlaw clubs are also known by another term: “one-percenters.” This identifier comes from an oft-repeated (but possibly false) story about the AMA insisting that 99 percent of motorcyclists are mainstream, law-abiding Americans. The outlaw clubs proudly position themselves in that remaining 1 percent.

One of the first such clubs was the McCook Outlaws, which formed in McCook, Illinois, in the 1930s. After a period of dormancy during World War II, the group came back together and ultimately relocated to Chicago, becoming the Chicago Outlaws in the 1950s, about a decade before Lyon started tagging along.

The bikeriders’ best storyteller

Each of Lyon’s interviewees had a unique perspective on outlaw culture and how they fit into it. Cal, a former airman, had been to 18 countries and “seen what most people have read about.” Rodney Pink, meanwhile, was a motorcycle racer who insisted that “being on a motorcycle don’t make you special at all” and lamented that while “everyone wants to be part of something,” nobody wants to “have any responsibility unloaded on ’em.”

The bikeriders also spoke candidly about the dangers of their lifestyle. Johnny Goodpaster, who once broke his leg in 17 places, called such injuries an “occupational disease,” while “Funny Sonny” described watching a “little guy on his Honda” with a “helmet and everything” who accidentally drove over a cliff.

But as Lyon recalled in a 1997 preface to a new edition of the book, the “best storyteller” of the group was Kathy Bauer, 26, who “didn’t even ride a motorcycle, but was married to Benny, a member of the club.”

According to her interview, Kathy noticed Benny while she was at a bar with a friend, who advised her not to get involved. “Every time he gets up on his bike, he has an accident,” the friend warned. Benny persisted, planting himself outside Kathy’s house and refusing to go home.

“My boyfriend would still come over, and Benny would still sit here, and I’d tell him, ‘You better go home.’ And he wouldn’t go,” she recalled. “So finally, my boyfriend left, and Benny was still around. So he says, ‘Let me take you to the meeting. Everything’ll be real nice.’ So I went to the meeting. After that, I started goin’ out with him. I only went out with him, never with any of the other guys in the club. And five weeks later, I married him.”

In The Bikeriders, Kathy describes the arc of the couple’s relationship in a series of startling anecdotes and off-the-cuff reflections:

I’ve had nothin’ but trouble since I married Benny. I’ve seen more jails, been to more courts and met more lawyers, and it’s only a year. That’s a short time for so much to happen.

 

Benny thinks that when you die, you’re better off than when you’re living. You know, like when his dad died, he said, “It’s just as well, he’s better off that way.” When his friends got killed, well, they’re better off that way. No feelings.

 

I thought I could change him, you know? Every woman thinks that she can change a guy. Not to her own ways, but to be different. Not to be different, but to be, I don’t know. Like he’s wild. I used to think he’d get over that. But he don’t.

Lyon’s book features one photograph of Kathy. Sporting a dark beehive haircut with side-swept bangs, she stands in a bathroom with three mirrors, each reflecting her profile at a slightly different angle. In the main reflection, she looks directly at the camera, lips slightly parted, at ease but alert.

Benny, meanwhile, is an elusive figure. While Kathy describes him at length, he was never interviewed. The book features two photographs identified as him: One shows him gripping a pool table covered with ring stains; his head hangs between his shoulders, obscuring his face. The other captures him from behind on his motorcycle, wearing a “Chicago Outlaws” jacket and backlit by headlights.

Adapting The Bikeriders for the screen

The film adaptation, which debuts Friday, follows characters based on Kathy (played by Comer), who also narrates the story, and Benny (Butler). Some scenes play out just as the anecdotes in the book, such as the pair’s first meeting. Kathy is at a bar with a friend when she notices Benny, who is leaning against a pool table in a nearly perfect recreation of Lyon’s photo. Here, though, he looks up. We see his face, hear his voice and find out what happens next.

Ahead of the movie premiere, Lyon heard from a man named Kirk: Kathy and Benny’s son. He learned that Kathy had died, but Benny was living in Florida. “So I call Benny up,” Lyon tells the Telegraph. “We have a great talk. He’s totally upbeat. And then he says, ‘Hey, you know the picture of me at the pool hall?’ I said, yeah. He says, ‘It’s not me.’ What? ‘Check out the tattoos. It’s not me.’”

The movie is structured in two parts. The first half follows a group of misfits finding a family; much like Lyon’s book, it is meant to “glorify the life of the American bikerider.” As one of the club members, Brucie (Damon Herriman), says, “We don’t belong nowhere else, so we belong together.” The second half is a darker meditation on the dangers of outlaw life. As members of a younger generation join up, they introduce a newfound aggression and propensity for cruelty.

“[The violence] in the second half is fairly cruel, and that’s the important part,” Nichols tells PA Media. “If you just have the first hour, this would be a film glamorizing violence. Nobody wants that, nobody needs that, the world doesn’t need that. If you take the two parts as the whole, I think it says, ‘Here are the consequences of choosing to live this kind of life.’”

The book does not feature this second chapter. But while Lyon has retained an affection for the outsider spirit—“I like rebels and think they are intrinsic to the survival of our democracy,” he told the Chicago Reader in 2014—his views have evolved with time.

By the end of his stint with the Outlaws, Lyon was already growing disillusioned with the group. As he said to the Observer, he remembers getting into a “big disagreement with this guy who rolled out a huge Nazi flag as a picnic rug to put our beers on. By then, I had realized that some of these guys were not so romantic after all.”

What became of the Outlaws

Today, more than 300 outlaw motorcycle gangs operate across the United States. According to the Department of Justice, which defines the groups as “organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs as conduits for criminal enterprises,” the Outlaws have some 1,700 members in more than 100 chapters around the world. The club has engaged in criminal activities such as “arson, assault, explosives, extortion, fraud, homicide, intimidation, kidnapping, money laundering, prostitution, robbery, theft and weapons violations.”

The real Outlaws are “certainly aware of the film,” Nichols tells the Globe and Mail, but he has not had any contact with them. In the film, the club is called the Vandals, a fictional name intended to distance the project from existing groups, which the director had no desire to portray on screen. “If I’m being completely honest, I’m not really interested in contemporary biker culture,” he adds. “I was interested in the people in Danny’s book.”

Besides, Lyon believes the two groups have little in common. The people he knew in the 1960s were quite different from today’s biker types, whom he notices in connection with news events like the January 6 insurrection. Instead, the photographer tells A Rabbit’s Foot, the closest analogues are perhaps “the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux fighting the oil pipeline and the catastrophe of climate change.”

Today’s Outlaws appear to have an internet presence, albeit a limited one. One website, belonging to the Outlaws M.C., instructs, “Everything is done face to face NOT online DO NOT write us asking how to join! Find an Outlaw and ask him!” Another site, belonging to the Outlaws M.C. World, features an article titled, “What is [an] Outlaw M.C. one-percenter today?” “To say that one-percenters are criminals or people of a lesser moral code than the rest of society is a tainted opinion,” the pseudonymous author argues. “We may not live by the rules of society, but we do live by its laws.”

Another language quibble: “Bikerider” is not a word, strictly speaking. It does not appear in the dictionary. According to Lyon, it is a word that once held a narrow definition, describing a subculture as it existed at a specific time and place.

“Back then in Chicago, they had a lot of names for things, names that were of the Midwest, and of that city, words belonging to that place and to the people who lived there,” wrote Lyon in the 1997 preface. “One of those words was bikeriders. No one there ever called them motorcyclists. The machines were called bikes, and the riders were called bikeriders. The word biker was simply never used in the Midwest by anyone at that time.”

After finding a publisher for the book, a copy editor explained that the title would need to be two words: The Bike Riders. Lyon pled his case—and won. In the years that followed, he was aghast to see “biker” become widespread. “I even use it myself,” he wrote. “The term that I heard and loved, and used with such pride, has all but been forgotten.”

When Guggenheim award-winning photographer and Bend resident Nancy Floyd takes on a project, she’s in it for the long haul. She began her best-known project, “Weathering Time,” in 1982. Just out of grad school at Cal Arts, she planned to take a single picture of herself in her apartment every morning for 20 years to capture how she aged. But the most striking aspect of this collection isn’t the change we see in Floyd in pictures that show her with friends, family, pets, and the clothing and objects that mark each time period, but how her world — and by extension ours — changes, with the people and things that anchor us shifting as the years accumulate.

After a first exhibition of this collection at the 20-year-mark, Floyd understood that its true power would be to record her entire life. At the 39-year mark, the collection was published as a book, and now, in her 60s, she continues to take her daily picture.

Until her first trip to Death Valley in 2009 Floyd thought of herself as an environmental/documentary/portrait photographer. During that trip she learned that her mother was dying, and within the next month her mother passed away. The next year, when Floyd began visiting Death Valley with the idea of getting away and mourning her mother in the beautiful desert landscape, her work began to change. The photographs she was taking were becoming more conceptual, more an exploration of her connection to the environment than a recording of the environment itself. Her lens was capturing not just the wider expanses of the landscape surrounding her, but the more intimate signs and marks of her presence within it.

After her third visit she realized she could do a project about her time there, and her focus would be more on personal space and connection, a significant shift from her documentary work. The resulting body of work became the exhibition “Walking Through the Desert with My Eyes Closed.” “The desert is big and vast,” she says. “How can you tell the story of the desert? I can tell the story of me, in the desert.”

Floyd’s current project, “For the Love of Trees,” embraces her love of the natural world, combining both documentary and more personal photography to explore how, as a culture and as individuals, we relate to and work to sustain Oregon’s forests. Inspired after meeting scientists working at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the central Cascades, Floyd began taking her camera into the woods, spending time with and photographing key forest stakeholders — those who study trees, protect trees, make a living off of trees, and those who see trees as part of their daily life. These stakeholders, she says, include scientists, National Park Service rangers, firefighters, loggers, environmentalists and Indigenous people.

Now three years into this project Floyd adds to her ongoing documentary work by hiking into the forest alone, trying to make work that’s both personal and, she hopes, holds meaning for others. Her long-term goal for these photographs, she says, is to show the disparate ways we humans rely on trees, and to celebrate the possibilities for positive environmental change.

Editor’s note: The following is an edited excerpt from the new book “Big River: Resilience and Renewal in the Columbia Basin,” by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes and David Moskowitz (June 2024, $39.95, Braided River/Mountaineers Books).

THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN the most ambitious and complicated of my photographic career.

My aim as a documentary photographer is to present the world to viewers as I encounter it. For this project, however, several elements moved away from simple documentation of the world as we humans typically see it walking around during the daylight hours. Camera traps offered me the opportunity to capture the secret lives of wildlife at night, while flash photography similarly let me document the world of gillnet fishermen plying their trade in the darkness on the mainstem of the river.

Flights, generously donated by LightHawk Conservation Flying and others, along with the use of a photography drone (DJI Mavic 2 Pro), allowed me the opportunity to share an aerial view of the watershed I believe is critical to appreciate the scale of the geography and the ways water shapes the landscape.

To get down to eye level with fish required underwater photography on a scale I previously had not endeavored to create. Finally, producing a series of portraits of individual people with vastly different relationships to the Big River required careful coordination and staging to create a cohesive series of images in contexts that were relevant to them and that showed the connections they all have to this one collective watershed.

I used a variety of mirrorless and DSLR Canon bodies and lenses for the majority of the images. I toned images in Adobe Lightroom. My love of strong contrast in landscape images means several involved layering multiple exposures of the same image to capture the full range of light. For some underwater images, I used denoising software as part of image processing to balance low light and turbid water.

In the end, I wanted a series of images that gave the viewer as wide a variety of unique perspectives as possible. I wanted to let the many voices of this watershed, from salmon in the river, to humans on the banks, to glaciers on the mountaintops, have the opportunity to share their perspective with you.

I worked very hard to listen to and watch the people, creatures and places and take my cues from them about what stories they wanted to share.

Photographer Sirui Ma’s debut exhibition explores the unspoken solidarity among women of Asian descent navigating multiple cultural identities in a new city

June 21, 2024

By Lauren Hughes

Published: 08:26 EDT, 21 June 2024 | Updated: 08:29 EDT, 21 June 2024

The Princess of Wales has had a passion for photography since her student days – and her flair for documentary-style images has resonated with royal fans who get an intimate insight into her and Prince William’s young family. 

Today, Kate released a brand new picture to mark her husband’s 42nd birthday, showing the heir to the throne’s playful side as he jumps for joy with his children on a beach in Norfolk.

It’s the latest in a series of sweet candids the mother-of-three has shared on social media – which are a world away from the stuffy and posed pictures we’ve seen from royals in years gone by.

Just last week, a photo released on Father’s Day showed Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, nine, and Prince Louis, six, on a beach trip alongside their dad, posing with their backs to the camera as they looked out to sea on the coast, near their Anmer Hall home.

Elsewhere, Kate has also been known to capture her children’s birthday portraits – which let their personalities shine through – as well as a heartwarming image of the late Queen Elizabeth and her grandkids.

She is particularly adept at capturing her family in natural poses, letting their personalities shine through.

The photo album looked very different only a few decades ago, when King Charles and the late Princess Diana were releasing much more formal, posed images. 

The difference between the easy grins and smiles in Kate’s images – over the at-times stiff silhouettes captured of her husband’s parents when he was a baby – are stark.

Charles and Diana look more formal – and less natural – in archive shots, and don’t signal the same warmth evident in Kate’s photos.

In photographs taken after Princess Diana left the Lindo Wing in London with a newborn Prince William, the couple are dressed in formal outfits – with Charles donning a suit for the occasion.

Compared to Prince William’s laid-back shorts and baseball cap, Charles and Diana’s ensembles look decidedly less down to earth.

In a 1984 portrait taken to mark Prince Harry’s christening, the couple are in more ceremonial attire again, posing for the camera with their two children.

Proving just how difficult it is to get children to pose for a serious photo, William’s pointing at the camera is arguably the most natural element of the shot. 

It’s however promising to see that Kate is still keen to share her photography with the world with this latest release, after she was subjected to criticism following the Mother’s Day photo-editing furore.

After concerns from photo agencies were publicly aired, the Princess issued a statement on X  and Instagram admitting she ‘edited’ the image.

Kate added that she does ‘occasionally experiment’ as an ‘amateur photographer’ and apologised for ‘any confusion’ the image caused.

The family photo was the first picture of the Princess of Wales, 42, to appear since her abdominal surgery earlier in the year. 

Despite the blip, Kate has captured countless touching images of her children and husband over the years – and shared many of these with the world through emotive social media posts. 

Prince George, now ten, is naturally a firm fixture on Kate’s camera roll, with his mother marking milestones such as his first day at nursery in Norfolk, and supporting the England squad in a team shirt in 2019. 

With the Royal Family moving towards a more relatable direction, it’s no surprise they’ve ditched the formal dress for something more low-key.

And Kate’s photography talents only add to this new image of the monarchy.

On George’s seventh birthday, two photographs were released, taken in July 2020 during lockdown at their then Norfolk home, Anmer Hall, while his eighth birthday saw him perched on the bonnet of a Land Rover Defender.

The most recent snaps of the young Prince were on his ninth birthday and showed the future King posing in a polo-style top in a beach setting. 

Princess Charlotte’s birth also gave Kate the opportunity to practice snapping her two children together for the first time – which is no mean feat when toddlers are so easily distracted. 

And angelic looking George was clearly up to the challenge though, cradling his baby sister while wearing an adorable button-up shirt. 

Princess Charlotte’s development from a bright-eyed toddler to a headstrong young woman has also been documented on Kate’s camera roll. 

In earlier pictures we see Charlotte looking adorable in a lemon cardigan, as well as holding the family dog for a portrait to mark her seventh birthday. 

 Later we see Charlotte posing with the family dog and a cheeky grin aged seven. 

And of course, Prince Louis, the youngest Wales child has been the subject of a number of sweet photographs, with his cheeky personality shining through more and more as he gets older. 

The Princess of Wales has also captured some early moments between Charlotte and Louis, as well as the young Prince as a tiny baby. 

More recently, Prince Louis has been photographed cycling to nursery on his bicycle – and in a group family photos with dad Prince William.  

FAMILY PORTRAITS 

The rest of the royal family also benefit from Kate’s photography talents, with the Princess capturing a beautiful picture of her father-in-law Charles and Prince Louis when he was just two years old.

Kate was also given the honour of photographing Queen Camilla on her 75th birthday, with an image released showing the Queen in a summer setting with a basket of cut flowers, wearing a pretty blue dress.

The Princess of Wales also took moving photographs of Prince Philip and great-granddaughter Mia Tindall sharing some lunch before he passed away in 2021, as well as a sweet moment between the late Duke of Edinburgh and Prince George enjoying a carriage ride.

Pentax has launched an innovative addition to its lineup with the Pentax 17, a new film camera designed to bridge the gap between smartphone photography and traditional film cameras. Priced at $500, this camera offers a unique proposition in the world of film photography.

Embracing Half-Frame Technology

The Pentax 17 stands out with its half-frame format, allowing it to capture 72 smaller frames on a standard 36-exposure film roll. This approach not only doubles the number of photos per roll but also introduces a vertical framing style, reminiscent of smartphone photography. For users accustomed to the convenience of digital devices, this format offers a familiar shooting experience.

Design and Build Quality

While its appearance may resemble entry-level SLRs of the past, the Pentax 17 is far from ordinary. Boasting a robust build and equipped with a sharp lens (albeit with a maximum aperture of f/3.5), it promises reliable performance for both novice and experienced photographers alike.

Automatic Features and User-Friendly Design

Targeted towards smartphone photographers transitioning to film, the Pentax 17 simplifies the shooting process with automatic exposure modes. These modes cater to various lighting conditions and even include options for combining ambient light with built-in flash, catering to creative needs. Despite the lack of manual controls, users can still adjust exposure compensation to fine-tune their shots.

Creative Possibilities and Future Prospects

One of the exciting features of half-frame cameras is their ability to create diptychs effortlessly, allowing for unique storytelling through paired images. As Pentax looks ahead, the 17 is just the beginning, with plans for future models including an SLR and a fully manual SLR. This expansion promises to revive interest in film photography among a new generation of enthusiasts.

How did you develop the palette for the film?

We found five color photos that Lyon took which helped a lot. After looking at so many black-and-white photos from the book, it was strange to see what his world looked like in color suddenly. Those photos were especially helpful with costuming and hair and make-up. Using those photos, we developed an overall palette for the film.

Mitch Paulson was our color grader and he helped us keep all the colors pretty warm. When we did our digital intermediate, we had the colors be a little saturated and a little on the sepia side, which helped pop greens and reds, like the red shirt that Johnny wears.

What was particularly memorable in shooting this film?

We hadn’t shot in film in a while, especially since so much is digital right now. We had to get out our light meters out and start taking reference photos. Shooting film again felt a little like getting back on a bike. The thing that is interesting about shooting celluloid is you never know what you’re going to get. No one knows what the film’s going to look like until you get it developed and look at the dailies.

I remember we were shooting Cockroach (Emory Cohen) at the end of the day in a location in Ohio, just above Cincinnati. The clouds were moving in and suddenly there was no more light. We just shot it and had to wait to see what we got. It went really blue, but we just kept it in the film. I’m sure that when Danny was shooting his book, he ran into situations where he had to shoot when the light was gone and create what he could from the elements he had. That’s kind of what we did for that scene.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.