A photography project.

When I stumbled into BMX over thirty years back, the outlaw creativity and dirty freedom hit hard. A wild little world bursting with invention, no maps, no masters. DIY ruled the day. You built it, you rode it, you reworked things as you rolled. Carving lines through car parks, bumping curbs, sliding flat bars, messing with all the things that weren’t meant to be messed with. It was speed and soul, defiance and friendship. A kind of drunken joyful resistance on wheels.

And for some it’s still just like that with little pockets still burning bright. But for most, somewhere along the line, the shine got scrubbed down. Sure, I got older. But that’s not all of it. Something’s crept into society at large: slow, quiet, everywhere. Order. Control. Sterile conformity. Things cleaned up, and not just in riding. Maybe it’s neoliberalism. Maybe it’s Covid. Maybe it’s the internet. Maybe it’s just the machine humming louder. This photo work is a questioning of that tension. Shot during lockdown, it’s a rider’s eye view of the Southwest landscape. A trip through time and place: where we came from, what we’ve got, and what flickers just beyond the frame. No answers. Just a celebration of different cultures and a gentle nudge toward other ways of being. Toward keeping the fire alive.