Behind Danny Lyon’s famous photos that inspired the new film ‘The Bikeriders’

The new movie Bikers (2024) takes us into the ranks of a motorcycle gang nicknamed the Vandals, whose members face the true price of freedom and rebellion. At its heart is Benny (played by Austin Butler), the group’s newest recruit, drawn to its charismatic founder and leader, Johnny Davis (Tom Hardy). But the Vandals’ increasing violence eventually alienates Benny, testing both his loyalty to the club and his marriage to Kathy (Jodie Comer).

Solely for a film, the film was adapted by director Jeff Nichols from a series of photos taken by Danny Lyon from 1963 to 1967. Then an aspiring photographer, Lyon spent years riding with the Chicago branch of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, documenting their adventures. and relationships in audio recordings and images that made their way into a book.

Bikers (1968) captured Lyon’s realistic and somewhat romantic view of life in the motorcycle club, depicted in high-contrast black-and-white photographs. The volume is rounded out with memories of its members, including the real Benny, Kathy, and Johnny, as well as characters like Funny Sonny, Zipco, and Cal (played in the film by Norman Reedus, Michael Shannon, and Boyd Holbrook, respectively).

“You had all the details and you even had some of the most beautiful lines written for you in this book,” Nichols said on its adaptation. “I just needed a structure I could hang them all on.”

While the film puts a fictional spin on the events of the book, Lyon’s book already contains real drama. “Being an outlaw,” Lyon recalls in his new memoir, “was exciting enough.” Here’s the story behind the famous photo series that inspired Bikers.

How did Lyon find his subjects?

The first image of cyclists taken by the photographer was accidental. In 1963, while in a car with his friend Skip on the way to a motorcycle race in Wisconsin, he saw a group of racers ahead, speeding across a bridge over a railroad track. He grabbed his Nikon F, centered the five bikes in the frame and pressed the shutter button. The resulting photo would eventually make the cover of The bikers.

“I took the photo through the front window of a moving car, and then made some of my most successful photos from moving vehicles,” he wrote in his memoir: This is my life I’m talking about (2024). “Movement excites me. »

Inspired by Walker Evans’ “absolute realism,” Lyon earned his stripes photographing civil rights protests as a photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At the same time, he was fascinated by motorcycle culture: he bought his first bike, a Triumph TR6, at age 19 and regularly competed in races and field competitions.

Around 1965, he contacted the Chicago Outlaws through his mechanic, Jack, who was a member. Lyon first met the gang at a dinner on a Friday night, including members Kathy, Cal and Andy, who insisted on posing for a number of photos. He agreed with them immediately: “I had found my subject. »

However, he is not the first to find a subject in a motorcycle club.

Definitely not. From 1953, the Marlon Brando vehicle The wild had fixed in the popular consciousness the image of the brutal rebel. Interestingly, in one of Lyon’s photos you can see Johnny’s album, which has a photo of Brando dressed in leather (the photo is recreated in the film). This same image would later be appropriated by Andy Warhol for his 1966 screen print. Four Marlons.

Before leaving with the Outlaws, Lyon also sought advice from Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist who had just spent a stint with the Hell’s Angels. Thompson, whose time with the gang would eventually be documented in a merciless book from 1967, wrote Lyon: “Dear Danny, I think you should leave this club, unless it is necessary for a photo shoot. »

Lyon joined the club instead, becoming a full member from 1965 to 1966. But he also saw photo action.

So what about the photographs themselves?

that of Lyon Bikers The series was filmed at Outlaws races across the Midwest. The thrill of the road is evident, as the kinetics of Ohio River Crossing, Louisville (1966) — just like the camaraderie that binds its members. Intimate moments are scattered throughout the film, from Big Barbara’s meditative position near a jukebox to Kathy’s cigarette break in a bathroom.

“I was immersed in a subject: stunning young men and women, all in black leather, on Harley Davidsons, outlaws,” Lyon wrote of his time at the club. “Every roll produced something awesome.”

The photographs debuted in 1966 at Lyon’s first museum exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, where they were exhibited in a small interior room. Conservative Hugh Edwards (to whom Bikers was dedicated) written in a letter in Lyon: “This time, you go further and present the exciting subject without intervening between it and the camera… In (these images) you evoke and provoke emotions and are modest about your own expression. »

Lyon brought a group of about 25 outlaws to the exhibit. “Most of them had never been downtown,” he recalls. “Many were dressed as if they were going to church.”

What happened after the one in Lyon Bikers project?

Lyon first had to know when to end the project. He approached Edwards, who had mentored the photographer since he was a student at the University of Chicago, with the question: “When am I finished?” As Lyon recalled, “Edwards’ response… was, ‘Oh, I guess when you’ve covered all the aspects of it.’ And I said, ‘Then I’m done.’

He also remembers becoming disillusioned with the club’s increasing violence and paranoia, as new members arrived with new tensions. “I was a little horrified by the ending,” he said. “By then I had realized that some of these guys weren’t so romantic after all.”

Bikers was published in 1968, priced at $2.95 in softcover and $5.95 in hardcover. However low the price, the book would go on sale, only to be later reissued at least four times. Today, a first edition of the book could cost you more than $1,000. The volume would also be served as inspiration for the 1969 film EasyRider; Bikers director Nichols I called him “the coolest book I’ve ever seen.”

While Lyon would continue to photograph social activism movements in the decades that followed, it is his images of horsemen that endure as powerful features of a bygone era, photographed as they are with urgency and intimacy. Lyon said he occasionally heard his subjects’ children, many of them long deceased, “often asking about relatives I knew that they didn’t.”

“They were outsiders and I was attracted to outsiders,” he said of the Outlaws. “From my involvement in the civil rights struggle, I knew that the best way to get good photos was to get involved. I was a participant who was also a photographer.

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