Bicycle and Car (symbols)

Cars are everywhere in photography. I'm going to try to stick to the more obviously symbolic use, but I think that pictures of them always carry symbolic freight, whether one notices it or not.

 

Bicycles, on the other hand, are not everywhere in photography. I had a hard time getting good examples to surface via searches. This seems odd to me, because bicycles are full of evocative connotations. And I love biking: when I lived near a medium sized city, I used to spend hours and hours just riding. There's something magical about gliding — flying! — silently (except for that delicious ten-speed tickety, tickety, tick that rises and falls: the sound of effortless speed) anywhere I wanted to go on a slim structure that I could easily lift with two fingers. A good ten-speed is a gorgeous machine.

 

 

 

bicycle:

 

 

 

car:

 

 

 

 

Links to examples to follow, below.

Links to pictures featuring bicycles:

 

by Helen Levitt

 

Mo Yi Dancing Streets

 

Bill Brandt Coal Searcher Going Home

 

 

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Links to pictures featuring cars:

 

 

Robert Frank's covered car maybe the perfect symbolic representation

 

by Dorothea Lange

 

by Garry Winogrand

 

by Tobias Zielong

 

by Greg Girard

another by Greg Girard

vid of David Bowie's Always crashing in the same car not available

the local ride,done in the best possible taste

 

(moderator note; image previously posted in another thread. please refer to photo.net terms & conditions)

Edited July 15, 2017 by Norman 202

OMG -- "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar": Siggy Freud

Bicycles, on the other hand, are not everywhere in photography. I had a hard time getting good examples to surface via searches.

 

Too obvious? Hyères, France, 1932

 

Where are the Dutch when you need them...

Too obvious? Hyères, France, 1932

 

Where are the Dutch when you need them...

marvellous.

I figure one serious post is owed, so here's a depressive take on bicycle symbolism:

 

Too obvious? Hyères, France, 1932

 

 

Heh. Sean, you know, I looked at that one and thought the bicycle was the best-supporting rather than the lead actor. But I'm glad it's been thought of and included. Thanks.

 

Posting this as you add an example. Thanks for that, too.

 

 

OMG -- "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar": Siggy Freud

 

Freud was talking about cigars. We're talking about pictures.

In this one:

 

Joseph Szabo Lia & Maura

 

... the bicycle is facing backwards. This makes me unhappy. A backward car would be fine: a backward bicycle is just ... wrong. Fellow bicyclists will understand.

Eggleston's iconic image

 

 

Phil, I looked at that for a long moment this morning and then decided ... NOT AGAIN ... but we can include it if you like. It's a good discussion to have even if I've already done it more than once (and I expect you have too).

 

Thank you for your car picture. I always love a dark foreground dash that puts me "inside." It transforms everything else.

 

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In this one:

 

Thomas Hoepker View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, towards lower Manhattan, Sept. 11, 2001

 

... what's the bicycle "doing" in that picture? At first, it looks like it just happens to be there, but take it away and look at the picture without it.

I'm not sure about the symbolism of cars, but I think they can evoke or connote a feeling of freedom. Prior to automobiles, people spent leisure time on their porch, and it's been said that the car was in effect a mobile porch on wheels. With the introduction of cars, people had the freedom to change the view from their "porch".

 

Especially in some early photos with cars, in addition to the associated freedom, there was also a sense of modernity, worldliness, and especially in advertising, an urban sophistication and a sense that the future was bright. It's interesting to think about how our associations with the car will change as autonomous vehicles take over in the coming decades. Self-driving cars are going to take away much of the freedom and control that we have now, and cars will become more and more simply a means to get to Point B. As cars evolve, so will what they bring to photos. Today cars may suggest "sexiness, power, speed, aggression", but these qualities will diminish in the future, and photos of cars might only make us nostalgic for these things. And I, for one, will welcome our new robot overlords.

Especially in some early photos with cars, in addition to the associated freedom, there was also a sense of modernity, worldliness

 

 

Very much so. I was just thinking about that re a classic bicycle photograph:

 

Paul Strand, The Family View II, Luzzara, Italy, 1953

 

The main thing I get from the bicycle in this photo is that, when viewed along with the bare feet of the men, they're behind the times; they don't have a car. LOL

I like your photo, Phil, and Julie's comment about the dash putting her inside. Cars offer mobility and freedom, but they also isolate. When I'm driving, especially with the windows up and the AC on, I lose contact with the outside world - the soundtrack is missing, the awareness of the weather is muted, the details of roadside things are blurred. I may as well be in a simulator or a video game. And so I agree with Julie that the dash in the photo, or the frame of a window or windshield, has a transformative effect. Without the frame, the viewer has more of a chance to feel part of the environment. With the frame comes separation or isolation from it. Ed Abbey (in Desert Solitaire) was frustrated by tourists in our national parks who wanted roads so they could see the parks from their cars. You can't possibly know a place by driving your car through it.

Cars offer mobility and freedom, but they also isolate. When I'm driving, especially with the windows up and the AC on, I lose contact with the outside world - the soundtrack is missing, the awareness of the weather is muted, the details of roadside things are blurred. I may as well be in a simulator or a video game.

 

 

June 14, 2017

 

The lovely, small car dealership that was about 30 minutes from me closed this year and I had to find a new dealer to service and state-inspect my car. The one I settled on was about 45 minutes away in a town that I don't go to very often these days. I'd gotten the route and mileage from Google so I could hope to be on time (8:00 in the morning), and was sailing along the last leg, about two miles short of my destination, It was a four lane highway with a speed limit of 70 mph. I'm going about 72 (I've become relatively law abiding in my old age). On the CD player, I was listening to a documentary about Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire (really!). I'm in the middle of heavy going-to-work morning traffic, interacting with slow/fast/annoying other-cars. I'm in the left lane passing a big truck when ...

 

... BLAPPETY BLAPPETY BLAPPETY ...

 

... one of my tires blows out.

 

Five seconds of panic to get the car off the road. Then full stop.

 

It was very quiet.

 

At which point I remembered going out the door of my house and asking myself, "Are you sure you don't need the dealership's number?" to which I thought, nah, I've got this all covered.

 

Sooooo ... after getting out and looking at my completely blasted tire and not even considering changing the tire myself (not going to happen ... ), I was sitting there waiting for the state trooper to show up so HE could call the dealership.

 

Which brings me back to Mark's post. I was like a snail out of its shell. My home is in the wilderness and being outside-of-a-car is my normal condition, but not on the side of a highway with packed traffic whizzing by, mostly at 80 mph, and with not so much as a turned head in my direction.

 

Then, however, after calming down (waiting will do that to you), I noticed that it was a gorgeous morning. Deep blue sky, scudding clouds, a cool breeze. There was a steep embankment to my right, and from behind it, swallows were darting up and doing the most amazing acrobatics. There were also slower birds circling comfortably on the other side of the sky. It was definitely a "small thing" moment (Phil's thread was in full bloom at that time, and I really did think about it).

 

You can't possibly know a place by driving your car through it.

 

I will not soon forget that particular place on that particular highway because I was forced to get out of my car and into that place. Full stop. It was strange; it was gorgeous.

Julie, that was awesome. Thanks for sharing.

one of my own life changing experiences came after crashing a car (hence the DB vid). i was driving home on country roads in the pouring rain on a dark and stormy night in darkest Dorset. my car was ancient, a real old banger (ford anglia if you must know, D reg from 1966) complete with dodgy electrics, poor brakes, a leaky roof, false bottom and a passenger who wouldn't stop moaning- "r wii there yet, Norm. I bustin' for a pii".

 

when the crash came it was totally out of the blue. well black actually due to the time of day (22:23 pm) with only thin shards of moonlight providing minimal light. at the time i remember looking at the sky and for some reason i was reminded of a fish. prophetic, or not, you can be the judge?

 

I took a corner too fast, the car flipped over and skidded into a fast flowing river, with banks about to burst due to the incessant, merciless rain.

 

i won't go into my heroics that saved the day for Edna and me. Nor the complete blackness and icy cold that petrified me. Suffice to say my training in the SBS was enough to keep us alive. my car, alas, was trashed. i was gutted.

 

always crashing in the same car was released that year.

In this one:

 

Joseph Szabo Lia & Maura

 

... the bicycle is facing backwards. This makes me unhappy. A backward car would be fine: a backward bicycle is just ... wrong. Fellow bicyclists will understand.

 

Maybe it was raining ? (Raindrops keep falling on my head .. . .)

 

Been a cyclist all my life - never had or wanted a car, mainly for ecological reasons (pollution, habitat destruction, wildlife destruction - I could go on).

 

Parental pressure made me take lessons when I was 17 - had three, hit two other cars and the man with the red flag. Driving ain't for me. I look the look of some cars, from the days of my youth and before.

Here is an ingenious use of the haze reduction strip on the top of the windshield to make an artificial (interior) sky:

 

John Gossage windshield

 

In this one, there is a car but no car is in sight:

 

by John Gossage (from his New Zealand shoot)

In this one, at first you'll think that the bicycle is just a design piece, which it is, by itself. But then perhaps you'll notice the shadow of the pedal; it's the pedal (shadow) that carries the symbolic "bicycle" meaning:

 

by John Gossage

 

The next one is from the very end of one of his Berlin wall books:

 

by John Gossage: from the Berlin series

Perhaps a retort to Eggleston's famous tricycle?:

 

 

John Gossage tricycle

A bit of nostalgia for me. I remembered I had a photo of a person riding a bicycle on the breakwater in Santa Barbara back in 1972. This is the largest scan I have of the neg without digging it out and re-scanning.

Good example, Phil. It's interesting that your picture reads "across" even though it's a vertical. I think that's because the car is such a force and it's at the bottom of the frame (see below for more on this).

 

Crewdson ... we've been through our disagreement on him before. Everything is just too congruent in his pictures. That's phony, to my eye; at least in photography. The cars (and all his other content, down to the smallest dust bit) have been turned into type players, not allowed to be what they are. I know you disagree.

 

I like that Gursky picture. I don't recall seeing it before. Gives me an excuse to rummage through my books ... I have a documentary DVD on him that made me like him less than I thought I would/did. But I'm getting off topic.

 

 

 

Back to vertical/horizontal reads from the top of this post. There are two "car" pictures from John Gutman that are almost identical, but they read very differently, to my eye:

 

John Gutman The Artist Lives Dangerously (first)

 

John Gutman The Artist Lives Dangerously (second)

 

The first one is almost square and reads, for me, horizontally, left to right. The cars are annoyances that are being ignored by the boy, who is in another world. The cars are the non-artist "real" world of busy people; the boy is in his imagination.

 

The aspect ration of the second one is 1 to 1.2 and reads vertically for me. It reads up and down, with the car being a menacing monster from which the boy winces. Where, in the first one (horizontal) the boy seems solidly on the pavement, in the second one (vertical) he seems to me to be floating in the air, barely holding on to his art. The black car descends onto him like a vulture.

Car photo from the 60's. The Pontiac GTO was a symbol of "cool" especially for the teenagers. My friend Dana had one, and we all helped him work on rebuilding the engine.

Another bike photo