The Bikeriders.

The Bikeriders is a seminal work of American photography. It is the first series in which Lyon immersed himself fully and subjectively into the lives of his subjects in a manner akin to the documentary style of 1960s-era New Journalism by writers such as Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.

Lyon began photographing dirt track motorcycle races while at the University of Chicago, purchasing a bike and attending meetings across the Midwest. Around this time, he hitchhiked south to Cairo, Illinois, where he photographed his first demonstration and met members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the youth wing of the civil rights movement. Lyon continued to work informally for the SNCC while finishing his studies. After graduating in June 1963, he joined the SNCC as its first staff photographer, remaining in the role until mid-1964, when fraught internal politics and his own ambitions meant it was time to move on.

Lyon returned to Chicago in 1965 and continued photographing motorcycle races and track meetings. Work on The Bikeriders began in earnest when, at the invitation of a mechanic repairing his Triumph, he attended a meeting of the Chicago Outlaws and joined them as a member. Over the following year, Lyon photographed and conducted candid interviews with these gang members. Later, in a letter to a prospective publisher, he described the Outlaws as 'probably the only thing like cowboys left in America'. By joining their ranks, he demonstrated that he wanted to be one of them and could describe their way of life from the inside out.

First edition; 8vo (234 x 158 mm, 9¼ x 6¼ in); black & white photographs printed in offset, photographs and text by Danny Lyon; small corresponding white paint mark to pp48-9, grey endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in silver on spine and rear, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, printed in black, blue, and orange, light impressions to sides, minor wear to extremities, short tear to lower panel, crease to upper flap, an excellent copy; ix, [i], 94pp.

The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century pp190-1; The Photobook: A History, I p256; The Open Book pp236-7; Danny Lyon: Message to the Future pp15-21.