The title refers to the two visual elements present in each large, 4x8 foot photogram*. One, the female nude (suggesting traditional classic beauty), the other, the bicycle (suggesting modern analytic aesthetic). But the title also refers to the rather unusual fact that the bicycle is the only gender specific transportation I am aware of. Manufacturers had to make certain design concessions to feminize the bicycle, whose commercial introduction was made at the time of the women’s suffragette movement, and was viewed by many as too liberating for the opposite sex.
Girl’s Bike
*A photogram is not a print, but an original image, created without the use of a camera. Instead, it is a direct recording of an object's shadow on photo-sensitive paper. Physical scale is thus true to its representation, and gray scale is infinitely lush, in that it is produced without the grain of a negative. My wife and I produced this series on Ilford photomural paper, mounted on black, resin impregnated Gatorboard, and developed with an impressive 125 gallons of darkroom chemistry. This series was also developed with a California State Arts Council Fellowship in New Genre, which I recieved in 2001.