Thomas Schenk

Cate Dingley’s first monograph Ezy Ryders: ⁠
A photo book documenting New York City’s African-American motorcycle clubs, interwoven with intimate rider testimony.⁠

Adventure and brotherhood: this is what the biker searches for. They’re thrill-seekers and occasional hell-raisers, obsessed with freedom: freedom from the ordinary, from tedium, from rules, from society. White clubs excluded black bikers, so fuck it—they started their own. Like every family, there are dramas and even violence. The older bikers lament the loss of tradition as new clubs explode on the scene all the time. But there’s also a code of honor, and a profound loyalty to one’s brothers and sisters in the club. Clubhouses collect coats for homeless shelters and fill their saddle bags with diapers and baby wipes to deliver to needy mothers. They know what their neighborhood needs more than anyone and mentor young people to keep them out of trouble.

Ezy Ryders is the unexpected story of the New York City black biker. It’s been ongoing since 2014, when Cate first met a Trinidadian club in Brooklyn and they took her to a barbecue where there were hundreds of other riders. The project ballooned from there—after a period in which Cate was “prospecting” the scene herself. She conducted interviews with ten bikers from a variety of backgrounds, and am currently making a book with their oral testimony and five years of photographs.

Hard cover, 144 pages 80 plates, 220mmm x 245mm / 8.7″ x 9.6” printed in tri-tone at Narayana Press Denmark