Portraits of American Bikers: Life in the 1960s Special Edition - Hardcover

Beverly V. Roberts; Jim Flash Miteff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0985240407 ISBN 13: 9780985240400

Publisher: Flash Productions, LLC, 2013

Synopsis

SPECIAL HARDCOVER EDITION! Five years after the release of the original Portraits of American Bikers: Life in the 1960s (2008) by Beverly V. Roberts, a brand new edition will be released. Updated and revised, this brand new hardcover collector edition features photographs from the private photo collection of Outlaws Motorcycle Club member Jim "Flash 1%er" Miteff. Photographs fill this book with images that are vivid and life-like. These stark black & white photos have been scanned from the original 4" x 5" Kodak film negatives. In addition to the original photographs from the first book, photographs from some of the old school members are shared for the first time from their own collections as well as some thoughts & insight about their one-percenter lifestyle. Beverly shares her personal story about what's behind these photographs and what it was like growing up around this famous motorcycle club. "Flash" Miteff passed away in December of 1999. The book's introduction is by well known Detroit historian Cary Loren.

About this title

About the Author:

Not your typical "girl next door", Beverly Roberts, the daughter of Outlaw biker Jim "Flash 1%er" Miteff, was riding on motorcycles before she could walk. When Beverly was as young as eight years old, while helping develop the pictures her father took of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, she dreamed one day these photos would be shared with the world. A retired stockbroker, Beverly owns the publishing company named after her late father.

Review:

A comparison to The Bikeriders, a 1968 series of biker photos by Danny Lyon is unavoidable, and here the differences are most apparent. In photography circles, The Bikeriders has become a legendary debut photo book, still considered the most controversial and brutal book of its kind, sealing Lyon s reputation as the first to document the Outlaw bikers. Lyon, who was born in 1942, was a baby-boomer and of a younger generation then the Depression-era born Miteff. Lyon used the faster, more portable 35mm camera, the most popular camera of the 1960s. When held beside Flash s work, Lyon (who rode with the Chicago chapter of the Outlaws for two years) reads foreign, self-conscious and somewhat distant, a stranger entering a world he is trying to frame and explain. Lyon had a journalistic mind and was embedded in the Outlaws, self-aware of his position and slightly frightened of it. Lyon viewed his life within the Outlaws as an undercover anti-Life-magazine assignment. Looking at his work today it seems far less cutting-edge then it did in 1967. Flash seems totally at ease inside this world, like an elder statesman, a politician or poet taking the viewer by the hand on an underworld journey. Flash is self-assured, knowing exactly where and when to shoot. He controls the shots in a way most photographers only dream about. His eye is always in command, merging with the streets and the people he is photographing, and his photographs are all edge, sharp as razors. There is no doubt that if Flash had published his work anytime in the 60s, he would be considered a giant in photographic history. Such are the vagaries of time and fashion. --Cary Loren (Nero Magazine)

About this edition

• Publisher: Flash Productions, LLC
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0985240407
• ISBN 13: 9780985240400
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192