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What You Collect: The Ordinary and the Odd (Published 2016)

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The New Museum’s summer show “The Keeper” explores the complex relationships we have with the things we collect. The Times asked readers to submit stories and photos of their own collections.

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Schererville, Indiana, 1964. Racer. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

Last autumn, while I was working as a book designer for the Aperture Foundation, the photography nonprofit, a first-edition copy of of Danny Lyon's The Bikeriders from 1968 was placed on my desk in a plastic folder.

The Bikeriders is the first book by the now-legendary photographer; copies like the one I was given go for around £400. I was asked to tear it apart, write on it and otherwise mutilate it in order to find a way to create an exact facsimile of the book. I could hardly imagine unbinding the book, and I cringed at the thought of writing on it. But as I learned more about the book and about Lyon's relationship with the project, I became convinced he wouldn't mind me pulling his book apart in order to precisely recreate his original.

Unlike many photographers, Lyon pays special attention to all the aspects of his books - the captions, the sequence and the text are treated with the same acute focus as the images themselves. As I looked at his candid shots and casual recordings of conversations, the motorcycle gang members who were his subjects grew more and more alive to me. Staying true to the original means giving younger generations a way to rediscover how this book became iconic. Our new reproduction of Lyon's original will appear on bookshelves around the world at the end of next month.

The project that became The Bikeriders began in 1963, when Lyon was just starting his career as a photographer. An educated son of the middle class who grew up in Queens, his work had only been published in one book, The Movement, which was about Civil Rights in the South. He was a 21-year old student at the University of Chicago at the time, and he worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

These political photographs laid the foundation for Lyon's subsequent work - documenting the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club seemed like an obvious next step for a photographer interested in those on the outskirts of American society. The Outlaws rode Harleys and Lyon rode a Triumph, but despite this fundamental difference, he was able to forge close relationships with members of the club.

Wisconsin, 1965. Route 12. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

Hugh Edwards, to whom Lyon dedicated The Bikeriders, was an extremely important figure for Lyon and his contemporaries. From 1959 to 1970, Edwards was an associate curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Lyon would ride his motorcycle to show him new pictures. Edwards's encouragement and support helped Lyon as he worked on The Bikeriders throughout the mid-60s.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1965. Funny Sonny packing with Zipco. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

At certain points, documenting the Outlaws' conversations seemed more important than taking their photographs. The book is filled with highly personal moments that reflect the violent and extreme lifestyle of the club. For instance, Funny Sonny, a former Hell's Angel, described meeting the Outlaws for the first time, riding down a hill drunk, and seeing a rider fall off a cliff:

"So he goes over there and he takes about four good swallows of wine. And he gets sick right away, instant sickness. And he pukes it all out. But he makes it, he wipes his mouth off, shows a little class, wipes it on his pants. Little Honda guy, you know, helmet and everything. So down the hill he goes. So he's comin' up the hill and he's goin' good, he's lookin' good, he's comin' up like crazy... but he doesn't realise something. His bike is headed in the wrong direction, he's headed for a cliff. And he jumps on and gives the gas and over the cliff he goes, messed his whole bike and he's gone. He never came back."

Louisville, Kentucky, 1966. Crossing the Ohio. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

Funny Sonny went on to describe swallowing a caterpillar a size of a pencil, and what happens afterwards:

"Now I swallow, the caterpillar is out of sight. Open my mouth, show everyone it's gone. Then I know he's crawling, I can feel him crawling back up my throat, see. So I got my mouth closed, and, you know, it's closed and everybody's eating. And I'm at the table and everybody's eating, we're talking and I open my mouth just a little tiny bit and this little fuckin' caterpillar comes crawling out of my mouth.

"About four people got sick, see. So then I yelled to everybody, I said, 'Ah, you ain't gonna get away from me, caterpillar.' So I crunched my teeth down on him and chewed him up real good... Oh, Christ. That was good. That's when I really met the Outlaws, really met 'em good."

Detroit, Michigan, 1965. Renegade's funeral. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

The riders are painted as unforgiving and brutal. Over the course of the book, some members die on the road, some by suicide. But when you read between the lines, you can see love and respect underneath the violence. Johnny, the president of the Outlaws, said the club would buy huge floral pieces for each of the members' funerals: "We buy for all the club members that do get killed, or die, even if they're not in the club or if they were in good standing when they quit."

Ultimately, Lyon attempted to glorify the life of an American bikerider and all of its hardships. He recently told Photo District News, "In my America, people were all different, they were handsome, and everything around them was beautiful. And most of all, they were free." He added that, ultimately, all of his projects are "about the existential struggle to be free".

Schererville, Indiana, 1965. Sparky and Cowboy (Gary Rogues). (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

Once Lyon felt the project was complete, he grew tired of the club's lifestyle and moved to New York. Finding a publisher for the work proved difficult, however, and his personality didn't make up for his thin credentials: Lyon was, and still is, known as a stubborn photographer, and has voiced his dislike towards magazines and the brutal editing process involved with editorial work. Even the title of the book was disputed by copy editors who had not heard of the new term bikerider.

Elkhorn, Wisconsin, 1966. Cal. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

Finally, in 1968, his friend Alan Rizler managed to get the book published by the Macmillan company. Thousands of copies were printed and spread across America, but no images were reproduced in colour due to the expense that would have been involved, and there was little fanfare and hardly any press attention when the book was released. After Lyon saw a copy of the book displayed in the front window of the East Village bookstore, he would ride his motorcycle past the shop simply to stare at it. Eventually, MacMillan asked him whether he wanted to buy the remaining copies for 60 cents apiece.

Chicago, Illinois, 1965. New York Eddie's. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum)

After completing The Bikeriders, Lyon was made an associate of the prestigious Magnum Photos cooperative, but in 1975, when other members noticed that he never attended any of the meetings, the group dropped him, though his work has remained in the Magnum archive ever since. He continued to photograph important and personal stories with integrity, from the demolition of downtown Manhattan to the brutal prison system in Texas.

The book is a seminal example of the practice called New Journalism, in which the writer or photographer is immersed in the scene he's documenting and is a participant in it. The rerelease of The Bikeriders is not only an homage to this movement, it reminds us to follow our instincts and react to the world as fearlessly as Lyon did.

Danny Lyon's The Bikeriders will be available on the 30th of May from Aperture.

Sophie Butcher is a photographer, writer and designer based in New York. She is a contributor to TIME magazine's LightBox blog, as well as the blog Feature Shoot. Follow her on Twitter.

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Looking Back at Danny Lyon's Iconic 1960s Photos of Bikers

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Schererville, Indiana, 1964. Racer. (Photo by Danny Lyon/Magnum) Last autumn, while I was working as a book designer for the Aperture Foundation, the photography nonprofit, a first-edition copy of of Danny Lyon's The Bikeriders from 1968 was placed on my desk in a plastic folder.

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The most appreciated photography project on all of Behance this week is also probably the most touching portrait project you've seen in a while. A simple series of portraits, the project embarked to send one simple message: smiles don't get old.

Created by Russian photographer Ilya Nodia and retoucher Irina Muravyova, the duo was asked by Senior Group to go around to several nursing homes and capture a "very touching and beautiful project about the smile."

"We visited several nursing homes, where for a few hours turned their cozy living in a mobile studio," they explain. "As you know, the usual schedule was completely disrupted excitement and preparation for our meeting [...] elderly ladies were choosing outfits and powdering cheeks, and great grandfathers teased their beards and corrected medals. [It was] a wonderful experience and a great atmosphere created by smiles that never grow old."

Scroll down to see all ten, touching portraits they walked away with:

To see more work created by either of these artists, visit Ilya and Irina on Behance.
Image credits: Photographs by Ilya Nodia and Irina Muravyova, used under Creative Commons license.

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Touching Nursing Home Portraits that Show 'Smiles Don't Get Old'

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The most appreciated photography project on all of Behance this week is also probably the most touching portrait project you've seen in a while. A simple series of portraits, the project embarked to send one simple message: smiles don't get old.

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Contact the elderly to stop loneliness

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Contact the Elderly is the only national charity solely dedicated to tackling loneliness and social isolation among older people through face to face contact.

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Loneliness with the elderly

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Different approaches to recognizing loneliness in the elderly

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Experts agree that a one-size-fits-all approach won't work.

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JENN & DAVE STARK PHOTOGRAPHERS / toronto & muskoka documentary wedding photographers

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this is charles & regina.

married for almost seventy years. born in poland & immigrated to canada shortly after they were married. charles turned ninety-seven this month!

they continue to live in the beautiful house where they raised their family in toronto. it is filled with photos and paintings on the walls & every piece holds a story. every morning in bed, regina prays for peace in the world & between people. they welcomed dave & i one afternoon along with their grandchildren & were so kind to share so much of their story with us.

both are survivors of the holocaust. charles was interred at auschwitz, from 1942 until the liberation. regina was a teenager, and hid in the forest during the war. by day, they would hide literally underground, coming up at night when it was safer to search for food in darkness. she tells the story with clarity, about the moment the war had ended and they finally walked back into the city, shivering into krakow, she says, wondering about who of all the people they knew before the war had made it. they describe that feeling, of everyone searching for someone they knew, to be reconnected with the life they once knew. regina tells of how she found a friend who told her that charles, a distant cousin, had survived. they met up, fell in love, & were married. regina's favourite thing about him is his sense of humour. she says whenever she gets too serious about something, he balances her out.

when we asked them what they've learned in all the years they've been married, they gave us this advice : sometimes you just need to look the other way - we are all human you know. grace & forgiveness. i love that.

i cannot even begin to fathom the things they have seen, experienced, shared, and fought for to build the life they have. it's humbling and beautiful. thank you to our friends james & urszula for sharing your bubbie & zaddie's beautiful story with us.
a bit more about the grandparents project :
the idea came out of us spending a few days with both of my sets of grandparents in europe last summer. the photos we took, i will always cherish. they are my grandparents, the way i remember them. (see the photos here & here). the idea stuck in our heads, but life happens & we didn't really do anything about it. then, this winter, the last remaining of dave's grandparents, dave's grandma sadly passed & we thought, we've got to do this. what's stopping us? we have the ability & love of documenting people, so let's do this. we think it's important.

we are looking to photograph your older loved ones, in their homes, with their keepsakes and memories. share some tea & listen to some stories & take a few photos of them in their space. there's no age requirement, no quota we are looking to fill, we will just take these as they come to us. to celebrate a lifetime of memories. we've been touched by photographs & hearing stories from people in our own lives & think it's important. we want to share that.

participate! if you have someone in mind that you would welcome us to photograph, send us an email with a bit of info & when would be best for us to take an hour or so to visit. you are of course welcome to have the images we make as well! be in touch here.

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regina + charles / the grandparents project

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this is charles & regina. married for almost seventy years. born in poland & immigrated to canada shortly after they were married. charles turned ninety-seven this month! they continue to live in the beautiful house where they raised their family in toronto. it is filled with photos and paintings on the walls & every piece holds a story.

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Natalya Reznik representation of ageing and death

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Natalya Reznik representation of ageing and death

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Natalya Reznik is a photographer and art-historian. She works as a scientific editor of a Russian website dedicated to contemporary photography: Photographer.ru. She studied design at Perm State Technical University and earned a PhD in philosophy of culture in Saint- Petersburg State University. Currently she is a researcher at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), writes her thesis in the field of theory and history of photography and makes personal photo projects.
In this essay, I explore the representation of ageing in contemporary documentary projects and discuss projects that mix documentary and fictional approaches.

It is clear that this "intimacy," so much because of Nan Goldin, is widely accepted as we move further into the twenty-first century. There are a many projects showing people during personal intimate daily activities, where, for instance, they are naked or half-naked, showing their bodies in detail. At the same time, when elderly people are depicted (half) naked, the image seems unacceptable and provocative. When these images are shown, the viewer may feel the artist is ridiculing his or her models (only by the mere fact of showing such images, regardless of the way he/she photographed them).

Because we are conditioned by seeing glamorous, glossy young faces and bodies (youth ideology), we are more reluctant to look at depictions beyond it. Even some elderly people themselves are convinced that old age makes them not worth to be photographed, which may be illustrated by a phrase said by an elderly woman during the shooting of "Zapis Socjologiczny" (A Sociological Record) by Polish photographer Zofia Rydet.

The woman tried to refuse to be photographed by saying: "I am so frumpy, old, nasty, why are you doing this?".

Often when photographers create stories about their elderly relatives, they depict very simple, intimate moments from a daily routine. It is important to note that the photographers, being a relative, are "insiders," able to observe the very intimacy of the daily-lives of their models, which is absolutely impossible for a stranger.
The Topic of Ageing and Death
First of all, let us discuss why the topic of "ageing" (and death) is so crucial for photography today.

Death as a phenomenon disappeared from daily life in the Western world; dying people were displaced into hospitals and hospices, the deceased were hidden in morgues, and cemeteries were moved outside of cities. Linkman mentions in the book Awareness of Dying , it is crucial for there to be an alteration of the attitude to death in society. The authors encouraged doctors in America to break from their rule of silence and inform patients if they are dying, suggesting that the patients make their last end-of-life choices. Within this context, photography becomes a tool for relatives (or even the suffering themselves) to depict those days via camera and, therefore, save the memories about him/her.

Documentary projects which deal with this topic often have the same structure irrespective of the reason of approaching death (be it cancer, AIDS, or ageing). The plot of such projects consists of a depiction of monotonous, event-free, everyday life. Indeed, the central drama here is a life that fades away. Photographers initiate a visual discussion about identity and sexuality change, decay, and individual dramatic confrontation with mortality.
Projects on Aging and Dying
Projects around ageing and dying relatives can be created in a classical documentary style (Philip Toledano, Daniela Kapralova), in a genre of art-photography (Vesselina Nikolaeva), include elements of staging and theater (Aline Smithson), as well as be an entire reconstruction of the real story (Dru Donovan).

I will now focus on two projects which, in my opinion, constitute the two main approaches to ageing representation - the classic documentary and conceptual.

A son's photo diary, Days with my father by Philip Toledano, tells a story about his ageing father's last years and the relationship between the father and the son. After the death of his wife, Philip's father lost his short-term memory. He could not accept her death and, therefore, his memory extruded this information. Philip started a blog in which he posted photographs and accompanying reflections on his father's changing state. During three years until his death, Philip took and posted everyday life pictures of his father.

An opening photo in the project shows an elderly man sleeping in a chair with a funny sleeping-mask on (a mask with closed eyes embroidered). He looks touching and helpless. This sleeping mask connotes a return to childhood; people of an older age become childlike (they demand care, help and attention). Despite the very realistic way of shooting, which shows us the change of skin texture with age, corporality is not shown as repulsive. Rather the viewer's attention is drawn to the character's fragility and vulnerability, as he is a weak and a feeble man, in need of care and protection.

In Toledano's diary, which serves as a project's description, he describes how he attempts to protect his father from the external world by creating an artificial one, with nothing bad and dreadful. The son aims to create a secure, childhood-like world.

In this project, there are many close-up portraits of the father. A viewer may approach the character from very close, from an "intimate" distance . The viewer (or reader of the visual text) is, thus, involved in what is happening, not as an observer but as a participant. With certain portraits, the father looks directly at the viewer, into his or her eyes. That kind of contact (eye-to-eye) of a viewer and a depicted person is defined as "demand" . That is the demand of attention, participation, and a direct challenge from a depicted person, fully aware (s)he is being photographed. (S)he directly communicates with a viewer, who is forced to interact.

The sequence of Philip Toledano's photographs does not have a classic plot (rising action, climax, falling). The narration is straight forward-a viewer follows the daily life of an elderly man through his portraits and fragments of his environment. There is no evident collision. The character remains in the same place, in his room, and the environment does not change; it is only his emotions that change.

It is the permanently oppressive anticipation of the end that builds a plot of the project - every day for the son (and every next photo for a viewer) turns into a painful subconscious expectation ñ "When? What if this was the last one?" That painful, restless process turns into suspense for a viewer, involving him/ her in an endless state of anxious expectation of the inevitable.

After viewing the entire project, the title picture with the mask gains a new level of understanding. It becomes a metaphor of the father passing to another world, and represents sleep as death. But death also becomes a "departure to Paris" (according to the story Philip made up for his father, the mother "flew to Paris and is now taking care of her brother"). Toledano consciously chose this photo as an opening one- a man, sleeping in the chair resembles a plane passenger. "Now he's gone to Paris to meet my mum" is the last note in the son's diary, which concludes the story about his father.

In her photo project Arrangement in Green and Black, Aline Smithson photographed her 85-year-old mother. This project lies somewhere in the space found between documentary and conceptual photography. The compositional framework is mimicry of the painting Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Artist's Mother by a Victorian's epoch painter James Whistler. For two years, Smithson was looking for and buying different clothes and framed pictures at eBay and charity shops. Using Whistler's composition as a "modular grid," Smithson filled her photos with different props, always ironically playing with styles.

In these portraits, the mother is a "signifier," as a sign she refers to different epochs, events, or styles. A Japanese geisha, Elvis Presley, a disco-girl of the 80s, a clown, a bride, a ballet dancer, and even a prisoner- all these images resemble "fashion-looks" put on an elderly woman, which transform photos into pop-art works. Smithson also includes, in the composition of her photos, different paintings written in naive-art style - from badly made copies of world art masterpieces to nameless images of kittens, dogs, and horses.

As discussed above, the father of Philip Toledano is an active subject, who is often in a direct visual contact with a viewer; whereas, in the images by Aline Smithson, the mother is depicted half-faced, "offering" herself as an object to look at. The distance between a viewer and the elderly woman photographed is quite substantial and makes the image impersonal. A viewer is not involved into what is happening, (s)he is a detached observer of the "painting," neither forced to empathise nor invited into the personal space.

That game with pop-culture and theatrical staging can be considered an attempt to "remove" or to "mask" the feeling of dying corporality, while bright colouring looks unnatural and is likely an endeavour to make something almost lifeless "alive." This is supported by an emotionless, mask-like face of the woman, who looks aloof and indifferent to everything around her. From the project comments, it is clear that Smithson was trying to achieve this facial expression: "As a model she often wanted to be dramatic in the images, and I had to tone her down. She kept laughing as I was trying to focus and I had to tell her to stop smiling so much."

Even though the photographs of Aline Smithson might look a kind of exploitation of her elderly mother's appearance, as the mother does not completely understand how will she be depicted in the photos, one sentence from the text, written by her daughter, explains why an elderly woman readily participated in this photographic experiment: "As I progressed with the series, it become more meaningful, especially because I was bringing joy and laughter into our lives when there was plenty to cry about."

It is obvious that a preparation to and shootings themselves became a new way of communication between the mother and her daughter. The mother took part in twenty shootings and passed away before seeing the result.

The two series analysed above represent a large group of projects where artists photograph their relatives (other examples are Sophie Calle's "Rachel Monique," Tierney Gearon's "Mother's Project," Daniela Kapralova's "Susanka', Salva Lopez's "Roig-26", etc.). Each project is unique, with its own visual language and narrative. Nevertheless, most of them can be called "photo-therapy-like." In psychotherapy, there exists a term "phototherapy," which should not be mixed with a therapeutic photography.

Phototherapist Judy Weiser explains that phototherapy is a therapy carried out by a doctor with the help of different photographs; whereas, therapeutic photography is done on one's own in order to understand oneself, for personal growth and self-knowledge. It is evident that most authors apply therapeutic photography (or its elements) unconsciously. However, in almost every project text, it is clearly said that implementing photography helped authors to cope with the problems, which initiated these projects.

Photographers often experience suffering and loss, but ageing and death deeply affect them on a personal level. It is remarkable that, in such challenging situations,

Such projects seldom depict evident process of ageing itself; rather, they touchingly represent sufferings of the person who struggles with age-related alterations and increasing weakness. A spectator cannot follow instantly noticeable age alterations in the character's appearance. The character does not change much; (s)he is introduced to a viewer as an elderly person and fades away to the end. Ageing is interpreted here as the last period of life, not a phenomenon connected with the entire life-span (when a person can be repeatedly captured from birth to death, representing the flow of time).

Photography becomes not only memory-preserving, but also a means to "save" the disappearing matter in a digital/film form. It also provides a way to communicate with a dying relative, while other ways could have been lost already. Finally, it is a kind of a therapy for both a photographer and his/her elderly model.

Return to Issue 3 Table of Contents
You are invited to take part in the discussion (comments) below.

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Natalya Reznik: Images of Elderly People in Contemporary Documentary Projects

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Natalya Reznik is a photographer and art-historian. She works as a scientific editor of a Russian website dedicated to contemporary photography: Photographer.ru. She studied design at Perm State Technical University and earned a PhD in philosophy of culture in Saint- Petersburg State University.

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Photographer Ilya Nodia - Stories / Portraits