Biker Portraits

So I found myself walking down a crowded Weirs Boulevard, carting an arm chair on a dolly that I borrowed from a local market, and watching as the leather-clad Laconia Motorcycle Week bystanders laughed and pointed curiously in my direction. I had conjured up the bizarre idea of conducting a portrait session with some of the richly-diverse characters who attended bike week this year, placing them in the comfort of an overstuffed chair wedged amid a sea of colorful motorcycles.
I found myself asking the question, “Who are the individuals behind the tattoos, leather and growling machines?”
Lisa Jane, 38, recently crowned the winner of the Miss Laconia Bike Week Contest, was one of the first to lounge in the chair. Having been around the bike scene for many years, she spoke of how she would never ride a motorcycle again after being in a severe motorcycle accident. Kenneth Underhill, 47, rested his horned and helmeted head on the back of the chair and took a catnap while I photographed him, and later explained that after 10 years of attending the rally the clamor of the motorcycles put him right to sleep. His late wife had forbidden him from purchasing the helmet because she worried that he would accidentally poke an eye out.
“My wife passed away in 2004 with cancer and I was all by myself and I said, ‘By God, I’m going to go get me that helmet because that helmet is me,'” said the bearded Underhill, one of many to collapse onto that comfy blue chair and share a piece of themselves.