The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The allure of the American outlaw
If you are susceptible to dreams of rebellion, to fantasies of going off the grid, and taking to the open road, untethered from responsibility and conventionality, Danny Lyon’s “The Bikeriders” at Jackson Fine Art is apt to seduce you, luring you into the intoxicating headspace of escape.
In 1963 while studying at the University of Chicago, 21-year-old Lyon met a fellow student and motorcycle fan, Frank Jenner, pictured impishly grinning in a 1964 image “Frank Jenner, La Porte, Indiana” from “The Bikeriders,” the book Lyon published in 1968. Jenner built a custom Harley-Davidson in the UChicago dorms and ushered Lyon into the world of the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle gang. Like Hunter S. Thompson’s equally immersive New Journalism novel “Hell’s Angels,” in which the gonzo writer “goes deep” into the world he documents, Lyon dug into the Outlaws. He traveled with the group and eventually joined their ranks. As with his photographs of the student protestors who defied segregation in the South or in his documentation of inmates at a Texas prison in the ’70s,
Lyon identified with those outside the status quo.
There’s a dark romance to Lyon’s images of these outlaws. Lyon’s framing certainly helps you assume the position of a fellow traveler. Though, he shoots portraits of the biker world’s assorted characters — “Funny Sonny,” “Brucie” “Crazy Charlie” — just as often he aims his camera over their shoulders so we can see the world as they do, as in “Route 12, Wisconsin.” In that 1963 image, we see a group of bikers on the open road, retreating into the distance. The image is as iconic as any John Ford Western in capturing the quintessentially American romance of freedom and exploration.
Like the cigarette pants and oversized sweaters in Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut’s New Wave films, the “Bikeriders” clothes are testaments to the innate beauty and style of youth-driven subcultures where identity is enmeshed with a distinct look that categorically separates “us” from “them.” The angry-looking teased hair, the pompadours, snarky cat eyeglasses and ropes of chain worn on leather jackets like a general’s gold braid distinguish the bikers as inherently, unapologetically apart. “The Bikeriders” was said to inspire another touchstone of American rebellion, Dennis Hopper’s 1969 biker drama “Easy Rider.” But while “Easy Rider” pictured its bikers perpetually in contrast to “straight,” “square,” malevolent normality, there is no world outside the bubble of these “Bikeriders” who ride lonesome roads and hang out in beer can-strewn clubhouses or dandelion-filled meadows and seem to exist in a zone utterly their own. Reality may momentarily leak in, like a beam of sunshine through drawn Venetian blinds. In “Jack, Chicago,” (1966) an Outlaw, again seen from behind, so we can imagine ourselves in his skin, hunches on a stool in a generic Midwestern diner. Your identification is definitely not with the soda jerk in the distance. In that framing, Lyon captures how hermetically sealed their reality is, and it allows viewers to really imagine what that world would feel like.
Lyon’s images are also unabashedly sexy, capturing the full flower of youth and the snarling energy of young men who seem untouchable — their eyes far off or fogged with booze — sworn to buddies and bikes and utterly seductive in that icy, emotional remove. Lyon’s “Cal, Springfield, Illinois” is a 20th-century odalisque, a lean, dreamy man wearing the merest hint of a smile sprawled in the grass on a blanket. The history of photography is one of men looking at women, but here Lyon flips the script. He is enthralled by the people he photographs and invites us to join him. “In my America, people were all different, they were handsome, and everything around them was beautiful. And most of all, they were free.”