Photos by Beryl Fine
Beryl Fine is a photographer based in San Francisco, who strives to
find beauty in the unconventional; her photos are bold, yet they expose
a frailty that is so inherent in human nature. For this project, she
photographed 23 bike messengers, men and women, who are all represented
in the book.
Known as urban street messengers, today the modern bike messenger
stands synonymous with their predecessors, the pony express, but rather
than a horse or pony their trusted steed rides between their legs on
two wheels. They’re gritty. Foul mouthed, rough and tough street
couriers.
Glamour aside, these men and women have an unforgiving job keeping them
outside in sun and sleet, rain or shine, riding for good or bad. They
remain lurkers of the urban streets wheeling between buses, semi
trucks, taxis and oblivious street pedestrians, delivering the valuable
documents that keep the wheels of progress turning.
San Francisco Bicycle Messengers, created by Beryl Fine, captures the
charm and the obscurity. The rough exterior and the human character has
been taken and abstracted by the camera’s 35mm lens, to revile honest
portraits of these men and women.
San Francisco Bicycle Messengers, a 100-page photo book, with a
silk-screened cover illustrated by Mike Giant. A limited edition of 500
copies will be available May 1st 2009.
www.berylfine.com
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