Local artist, Scott Moss, has been posting fliers around town offering free artistic photo portraits of people with their bicycles. Intrigued, we asked a few questions about this hobby.
TCA: Your Bicycle Portraits art-for-art’s sake project is interesting. What inspired you to pursue this concept?
SM: I wanted to make some photos of people with their bikes, both because of my past and because it just looks cool and is fun to share.
My brother and I grew up in suburbia in California, so in order to do anything at all as a pre-driving-age kid, we pretty much had to have bikes. My bro and I would trek around, meet up with friends, and explore further afield than we ever could have with just walking. My bro has become a huge collector of vintage BMX memorabilia as a way of holding onto that tradition.
Then on my obligatory European backpacking trip after my undergrad degree, I spent time in The Netherlands and was blown away by their bicycle infrastructure. It’s not a coincidence that they ride bikes all the time and are also very friendly people. When I lived in Portland, I was involved in the bike scene in various ways. There is an environmental aspect to it. Let’s face it, cars are just terrible in so many ways – safety, noise, cost, pollution, isolation, etc. H.G. Wells said that bicycle paths would abound in utopia.
Shooting photos of people with their bikes is folksy, which fits my groove.
TCA: How long have you been doing this project?
SM: I started this type of photography very recently, corresponding more or less with the Covid thaw. Honestly I didn’t think that I would get much response at all, but after having put up a few flyers around Corvallis in strategic locations, the texts started coming in.
I also would leave smaller flyers on bikes I saw parked around town that looked especially cool. More often than not, when it’s obvious the owner of the bike put a lot of effort into making the bike just the way they want it, chances are they are going to want to be photographed with it.
The great thing about the fliers is that people who are enthusiastic about it contact me and we go have a micro-hangout and shoot a few pictures, and people who aren’t interested just recycle the flier. There is no hard-selling involved, which is nice, unless I see a really cool and unique bike that I really want to shoot, then I might lean into the owner a bit.
TCA: Have you received a good response?
SM: It has far exceeded my expectations, yes. It is keeping me busy, no doubt. At first I could schedule things that same week, but now I’m having to schedule things a couple of weeks out.
I’m hoping that people will value it enough so that they’ll start making donations, which has already started happening. That will mean I can cut back on my day job and do more portraits.
But I will never charge any money or make people feel obliged to donate because that will ruin the spirit of the thing.
TCA: Where did you learn photography?
SM: I’m self-taught. And my teacher can be a real asshole sometimes.
TCA: The images are created in sepia tone. Would you describe your equipment, why you like them, and why you use film over digital?
I use a vintage TLR camera (twin lens reflex), and Ilford hp5 black and white film. This camera produces large negatives, roughly 2 1/4 inches square. The thing that is great about this kind of camera is you show up to a shoot with it and the person immediately says, “Whoa, what kind of camera is that?” which is a great ice breaker. The camera is a couple of decades older than I am and it looks like something out of an old movie.
I bought a digital camera at one point and was 100% stoked about getting it. But after shooting with it for a while, I started not enjoying it at all. When I tried to figure out what was going on, I saw that film photography has a zen aspect to it that digital completely lacks.
With film you have to concentrate and be completely in the moment. That doesn’t exist in digital. You can take a digital shot, look at it immediately and erase it, then retake it, then erase it, then retake it, and eventually it just feels manic and destabilizing.
Film photography feels more like a Japanese tea ceremony. There’s a ritualistic aspect to it, a patience and a reverence. Looking at a negative on a lightbox, or even better a positive slide, can’t be matched by an image on a computer screen, let alone a phone. Film feels more real and tactile.
TCA: How long do you want to keep photographing people with their bicycles?
SM: One of my favorite quotes about photography comes from Garry Winogrand, who had a sort of working-class, no BS attitude about things. Winogrand’s quote is “I photograph to find out what [something will] look like photographed.”
There are no words in that statement that any grade school kid couldn’t understand, but the implications of the statement are huge. Looking at something in life and looking at the same thing photographed are categorically different. There is a new dimension revealed in a photograph, which is a paradox because you’re going from three dimensions to two dimensions, but the photo of a thing reveals more than the thing itself can ever reveal.
I’ll never get tired of that mysterious perspective shift of looking at photographs. As long as I see that when I look at my photos, I’ll want to keep doing it.
I would love to keep doing some kind of photography forever. As far as the bicycle portraits, if I could wave a magic wand, I would get an art grant for a year or two so I could pursue it full time without having to have a day job.
TCA: On your website you state you are burned out on taking professional photos/being a pro photographer. What happened?
SM: What I got burned out on, for the most part, was shooting pictures to sell things. It feels like blasphemy. Actually, no, blasphemy can be fun. (Shout out to George Carlin). But shooting those kinds of photos felt like selling out. It just felt inauthentic and base.
I understand the need to show things that you are selling as a marketing tool, but there was a sort of greedy rush about the whole thing that I wanted to get away from. That’s why I like ceramicists a lot. They often want to meet the people who are buying their work, not just bang out as much as they can to get rich. There are some great ceramicists in Corvallis.
TCA: What type of photography did you do professionally?
SM: I did a bit of real estate photography and a bit of product photography. It didn’t last very long though. I got absurd notes from the clients. If I had been a barber cutting their hair, they would have suggested that I use my left hand instead of my right hand for the scissors. Ok, so basically you’re telling me to make it look like shit? So I bailed out.
Now I take exactly the photos I want to take, and I enjoy photography again. Plus I love the sharing aspect of it, giving away photos to people who really love them. I never got that at all working professionally.
TCA: Will you go back to being a pro photographer after taking this art break?
SM: I would be glad to shoot photos and get paid for them, but it would have to be something not oriented towards marketing. I would be more than happy to do professional portraits, like senior portraits for college grads at OSU or something, but in the style that is on my website. And you won’t get them the next day because it’s shot on film.
With the bicycle portraits, I will often work with someone to tweak how they want to look, or in the environment that they like the most. There is a pretty consistent aesthetic to the photos, but there’s no overarching artistic vision, which always ends up being an inorganic perceptual bias anyway.
I don’t impose my vision onto the world, since only then can the world reveal its vision to me.
TCA: How long have you lived in Corvallis?
SM: Almost two years. I was doing an MFA in writing in Montana before moving to Corvallis. Before that I had lived in Portland for a long time, but Portland has become…..well, I’ll spare you the laundry list.
Upon leaving Montana, I decided on Corvallis because I had been here many times and loved the bookish and energetic vibe of the town. Great bike lanes too. And I love coffee shops, so I’m always hanging out at Tried and True, Coffee Culture, Bodhi, Allan’s, Interzone, Sam’s Station, etc.
TCA: You posted on your Instagram account that you wrote one of your books at Tried & True.
SM: The books are totally unrelated to the bicycle portraits except for having a zen spirit, you might call it. They are “This: On the Illusion of Self”; “Disappearances: The Infinite Remanifested”; and “Auction, Poems.”
They are self-published, but I went through the process of getting ISBN numbers and doing the whole official book shebang so that bookstores could scan them into their inventory and sell them easily. I haven’t gotten them in bookstores yet and local bookstores, even though I live in Corvallis, haven’t picked them up.The books are available on Etsy under the shop “Leiden Press.”
They probably will never be money books or bestsellers because they are speaking about something so strange and mysterious that the majority of people don’t want to be bothered with it. For me, they cover what is at the core of all the world’s great religions.
Often I will leave them around town in the little free libraries that are all over Corvallis. If you are in Corvallis, though, you can contact me directly and I’ll meet up with you to sell you one, no shipping required. Unless you want to scavenger hunt one from a little free library.
TCA: You have created art that you’ve exhibited at Footwise. Do you see yourself as an artist first, or a photographer?
SM: Yes, I had a show at Footwise last year of paintings – zen circles, or ensōs as they are called. This coming June I’ll have a show there again probably with the bicycle portraits and displays of my books.
I’m not sure about the answer to your question though. There’s not any clinging onto an artistic identity at all. Just whatever I feel like working on the most is what I do. Right now it’s these bicycle portraits, and I have started doing portraits of skateboarders and roller skaters as well.
TCA: What’s next for you?
SM: I’ve written quite a bit in the last few years, so I’ll take a break from that. However I do need to perfect my grant writing techniques, so I’ll keep doing that type of writing in the hopes of securing an art grant to work on photography full time for a while.
Other than that, I’ll quote a line from one of my favorite shows, Deadwood: “Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh.”
To check out the art of Scott Moss, or to connect about being a part of his bicycle photography art project, go to his Instagram @ScottSMoss or his website www.scottmoss.co.
By Stacey Newman Weldon
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