Life Cycles

The (mis)adventures of the bicycle.

If known at all The Netherlands abroad is known for any of very small list of things. These are in no particular order: wooden shoes, the red light district of Amsterdam, legalized marihuana (erroneously, selling and possession of marihuana are in fact illegal, certain regulations with regard to possession and selling are just not enforced), tulips, windmills, Gouda cheese and or canals.
What The Netherlands or Holland, as it is also known, is not known for, is one of our most popular national pastimes: bicycle theft. If you start looking at bicycles in the Netherlands there is one thing you’ll soon notice: the enormous creativity of bike owners. Bicycles are painted in the most curious patterns and no colors are excluded from use. Apart from that various form of adornment and accessories are used, from child seats to baskets and from plastic flowers to complete plastic jungles including wildlife.

Now the visiting foreigner might admire this explosion of creativity, missing the fact that there are actually two practical and pragmatic reasons for this, both related to the aforementioned national pastime. One reason is that a stolen bicycle should be made unrecognizable and unidentifiable as soon as it has been “acquired”. The second reason is that a unique bicycle with a memorable appearance is more easily recognized and retrieved. Now I known some people (otherwise known as wise-asses) are going to remark that purpose number one kind of defeats purpose number two. What they are forgetting to take into account though is the time factor. The creative alteration of the appearance of a bicycle takes time, inspiration and materials. Now I can hear you think: “yes, but how much time can that take?” I can tell you from personal experience that the answer to that question is: enough. The reason that I know this is that I have actually re-stolen my own bicycle on the same night it was stolen from me. I found it when I was on my way home on foot, cursing under my breath and actually saw the thing in a bicycle rack in front of one of the buildings I passed on the way to my house. The original lock was still attached and the cycle was unharmed so I recovered it.

This coincidentally was my closest encounter with the other side of the bicycle theft equation, as I am one of those rare Dutch with a cycle theft deficiency. (A fact which is mysterious even to me, because it is not from any moral conviction as I am completely immoral; at least according to the people that call themselves my friends) I have never actually stolen a bicycle myself or bough a stolen one knowingly. Even after the fourth and fifth ones had been stolen from me, which is usually the moment when even the most cycle theft resistant give in and go on the prowl for a free replacement, I held out. My final solution has been to become a bicycle free Dutchman, which as I understand is even rarer and might actually be illegal so please don’t tell anyone.

This long intro however brings me to the subject of photographing bicycles in which, possibly to compensate for my late lack of involvement in cycling matters I have been engaging enthusiastically. I have been making a series entitled “life cycles, the (mis-)adventures of the bicycle” dedicated to what you might term bicycle portraits. Here are a few examples; the full series can be viewed here: Cycle Cycle