Wheels and Waves

When Jo Fischer rode his Harley-Davidson to France in the summer of 2013, he merely intended to go on holiday. One of his mates had peaked his interest in a festival on the Atlantic coast with visitors coming from around the world to race their bikes and surf. Wheels & Waves is the Woodstock for bikers: Europe’s new custom motorbike scene has met in Biarritz annually since 2012 at the festival organized by the Southsiders MC, a club based in Toulouse. Wheels & Waves means wacky bikes, long beards and bright colours under the warm southern sun. For three days, bikers come to celebrate themselves and their machines … and Fischer was no longer just on holiday: taking photographs was his main priority.

The outcome is the book Wheels & Waves. Fischer designed the layout, had the book printed and distributes it himself via the shop on his website. From about 1000 photographs he chose 300 – a mixture of portraits, motorcycles and landscapes. He did not post-process a single image and, consequently, some appear dark as though clouds hang over them, and in others the motifs seem bathed in a muddy light. This is how Fischer understands photography: to capture an atmosphere, the photograph needs to be direct and unaltered.