Chicks on Bikes (And on Film)

© Christina Shook

Christina Shook was a newcomer to San Francisco and she didn't know anyone. Meeting men was no problem but she wasn't meeting any women. She had also just learned to ride a motorcycle. As an aspiring photographer, it all fit together: She would shoot photographs of women motorcyclists. Chicks On Bikes, the new book of photography published by Paper Wings Publishing, is the result.

The book is loaded with photos of women motorcycle racers, and also a mechanic, a stunt rider, an opera singer, an iron worker, and most especially, everyday women riders. In some instances the photos stand alone, while in others there is a brief bit of prose, telling the stories of the women in the pictures.

"Biker Chicks"

Shook, as a woman rider herself, clearly revels in the role of "biker chick." She tells of riding her motorcycle to clubs in San Francisco, wearing a mini-skirt, and parking on the sidewalk right in front of the club. "I always got in free," she says. "Being a chick biker is just fun. You pull up on your bike and you're not so anonymous.

"The idea of women bikers is sexy. There's probably something about motorcycling altogether that's sexy. As a woman biker and author of this book, I'd be naïve to deny this universal appeal," says Shook in the book. "Yet the world has taught us that motorcycles are for boys. If a woman is ever in a motorcycle advertisement, she is an object in a bikini or clings to the back of the man riding.

"As I began photographing other women bikers and hearing their stories, subtle relationships between the sense of female and mechanical began to emerge. . . I began to loosen my own stereotypes and attitudes about who women bikers are and should be. I saw human nature in the need to be pretty in the plastic flower sandals. Now I consider the nature of power when I talk to the girls who rely on boyfriends to maintain their bikes. I am less shocked at the biggest, meanest looking dykes who you'd barely guess are female but are the kindest and most supportive women I'd want to meet."

Shook tells of one of her first photographs for the book: "I had to call on all my courage and generally gregarious personality to go out and meet all these women. I remember riding along one afternoon and seeing a pair of very large women on an old Yamaha sporting helmets with stickers like ‘fuck to come not to conceive.' I rode along next to them admiring their powerful image, and when we stopped at a red light I shouted over to them that I would like to take their picture, and could they please pull over. Instead of treating me like the dingbat I felt like, they kindly pulled over, had a very friendly chat with me and invited me to come by their house and take photos. They were not mean, crude or in any way abrasive; maybe they were even a little shy."

...And Their Stories

In the book, she didn't want to just focus on the big shots and the beautiful people. Many biker chicks are neither young nor beautiful and "I wanted that whole span to be represented."

Her favorite story is the one about Florence Windfall, who took up motorcycling at the age of 45. One of her first rides was to a party at The Lost Ranch, an establishment in the hills above Los Angeles. With two baguettes strapped on the rear of her dual-sport bike she wandered the hills for hours. Finally, exhausted, she fell over and didn't have the energy to get up.

"Until she heard a noise and the fear of bears overcame her. Summoning superhuman strength, she got the bike off the ground and rode on.

"At long last, past midnight, after 16 hours of riding, she happened upon Lost Ranch and she could see through the kitchen window all her friends sitting playing cards. ‘We knew you'd make it,' they said. Apparently they knew her well," Shook says.

Another of her subjects gave her a glimpse into the complex mind of a woman rider.

"Another time I was with Alex Elchinoff, a racer and competent grease monkey. We were on the way to do some photographs when we stopped by the drugstore for a jug of wine and found a sale on cosmetics. There was tough, wiry Alex, fixated on the lipstick for well into an hour, finding a range of suitable colors for her admittedly lovely lips. My impatience turned to irony, then to humor, that this woman who had the nerves and focus to go 125mph on a motorcycle could be so easily distracted by the choices of Candy Pink or Dusty Rose."

What Shook finds in common among the women she has met and photographed is "A love of riding, a sense of power, endurance and individuality. Each has overcome cultural stereotypes telling us that women can barely drive a car with competence.

"Like the stereotypes say, some of these woman are wild; some are promiscuous too. They might be misfits and outlaws with a taste for drugs and guns. They might smoke more than the national average. They may be a bit more assertive when clad in leather and boots. . . They exist, and I embrace it all along with the teddy bears and unicorns that another rider might sport. They are this and so much more. These images give the world of motorcycling a lot of its distinction and I thank God for them."

» See the full gallery for Chicks on Bikes (And on Film)

Previous Article Next Article