Bicycle Portraits South Africa

With my penchant for cyclist profiles, especially in Africa, it will come as no surprise that I’m a supporter of the Bicycle Portraits project being undertaken by South African cyclist/photographers Stan Engelbrecht (Cape Town) and Nic Grobler (Johannesburg).

The Bicycle Portraits project was initiated by Stan Engelbrecht (Cape Town, South Africa) and Nic Grobler (Johannesburg, South Africa) early in 2010. Whenever they can, together or separately, they’re on the lookout for fellow commuters, and people who use bicycles as part of their everyday work, to meet and photograph. They’re finding out who rides bicycles, why they ride bicycles, if and why they love their bicycles, and of course why so few South Africans choose bicycles as a transport option. There is no specific range of questions asked, they’d rather just establish a conversation around the rider’s life and where his or her bicycle fits into it.

Velo Vogue has a guest post from Stan about the project. They are raising funds through Kickstarter to publish a book, and time is running out – Kickstarter is a strange model where they won’t get a penny unless they meet their pledge goal of $15,000.

I love these images – the diversity of riders, the natural style in which they are shot, the window into South Africa through bicycles, and the thoughts they capture from each rider alongside the image. They also have a nice little short film on their site on Vimeo, which makes me kind of wish they were making a little documentary along with the book. Clearly they are very handy with a DSLR and an ND filter. Maybe there’s hope for more video? Bicycles are motion.

A little Googling reveals some great images of photographer Stan Engelbrecht riding, a blog-format page at Kickstarter with more information on their other projects, and a hint that Stan might be sticking around.

I encourage you to support the project; it’s got bikjuju in spades.

(PS I head to South Africa later this summer, so email me if you’re in the Joburg area and want to ride, and watch this space for more South Africa content in the coming months. The deep reservoir of Mozambique posts from my March trip has only a few more posts left to share, so it must be time to head back to Africa!)

(PPS post updated to include the video embedded above)