Biker Chic

If you Googled "gay leather bikers" (and we are not suggesting you do so, especially if you're at work), Band of Bikers 1962/1972 (out now) — a collection of found photographs from the sixties and early seventies — is probably the last thing you'd expect to unearth. Sure, there are scads of leather-clad mustache aficionados, but they're not doing what you think they're doing. At least not on-camera. Instead what emerges from this unaltered, uncaptioned, unfettered album, which author/hoarder Scott Zieher found in the basement of his apartment building after a neighbor died, is an almost shockingly sweet band of brothers escaping a fairly judgmental world with a few weekend rallies in the sticks.

 

Fine, at least one of them brandishes a leather thong. But beyond the lone exhibitionist, these pre-Flickr/pre-digital/pre-Photoshop subjects don't mug half as hard as their modern-day counterparts (yes, we mean us) and are less concerned with getting a great Facebook profile photo than with enjoying each other's company and the serenity (and security) of the countryside. Like any found art, Band of Bikers relies heavily on context. In this case, what seems like a mundane batch of lazy Sunday photos you'd find in your parents' basement (if your parents were in the Scorpions) becomes a souvenir of rebellion from the days of Stonewall — when the simple act of assembly was cause for persecution. Instead of, say, bottle service.


Band of Bikers 1962/1972 is available now from powerHouse Books.