Bicycling Culture……Manufactured Totems, by Alain Delorme
The photographer Alain Delorme has a wonderful series called Manufactured Totems, perhaps inspired by these images of overloaded Asian scooters.
His images remind me of the quirky Camper Bike.
I also posted my own contribution to this genre a while back.
Totem # 5 from Manufactured Totems, by Alain Delorme, www.alaindelorme.com
Totem #3 from Manufactured Totems, by Alain Delorme, www.alaindelorme.com
Totem # 13 from Manufactured Totems, by Alain Delorme, www.alaindelorme.com
Here are some notes about the Totem series as only a French Photography Historian could write them (the full test is available on Alain Delormes’s website):
“The vertiginous height of the piles echoes the incessant expansion of the city itself. By updating the proposition of the Becher, Alain Delorme seems to create a parallel between these manufactured totems and the buildings in the background, which have become themselves contemporary sculptures. The urban space is permanently under construction, developing relentlessly. The skyscrapers invade the city and rise always higher, such as new totems, always more remarkable, always more impressing. Stratum by stratum, traditional China rubs shoulders with the contemporary industrial superpower. The race here is not only the one of the men in the city, but also the one of the city towards its future.”
