Bikernet Reviews “STURGIS” A Photographic Book By Michael Lichter

A two-wheeled tribute, to the life and times, of the Black Hills Rally, is also a homage, to a man’s vast talents, with a camera. The hard-bound book is 10.25 by 10.25 inches and contains 168 pages, of heavy glossy stock, with a forward by Peter Fonda. Each image is handled, as if fine art, with grand white space to mat each photograph. Over a decade was dedicated to this odyssey, by Michael, to transform his art from the plentiful pages of Easyriders to an austere book devoted to Sturgis and his abilities with a Nikon Camera.

Each page reveals the history of the Black Hills motorcycle rally, over a 20 year period, during which Michael was sent to cover the event. Beyond the photo-journalist aspect, through the carefully scribed text, the personalities, the history and the riders’ feelings for the road, burst to life. It’s a tribute to all who have ever peeled through sizzling Avon tyres to reach the party in Sturgis. It’s a guide to anyone who has never attended a biker celebration of such magnitude or felt the exuberance and freedom of the open road.

As Peter Fonda put it in his forward, “I finally made my pilgrimage to that Valhalla in 1990, for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the classic motorcycle rally of our times. But in 1990, there were 500,000 motorcycles, maybe more. And it was awesome. I rode up and down Main Street, rows of bikes lining each side of the road and a row two-deep running through its middle. Truly awesome. At least three concerts were going on at the same time for a full week. There were races, hillclimbs, and well-endowed women pulling their tops up and showing their beautiful breasts to anyone who asked. And cookouts at fields full of tents from Sturgis to Rapid City. Someone was always ready to help a fellow rider with whatever problem he or she had. It was a circus of delight for an enthusiast, and I was certainly, at the least, an enthusiast.”

The history, of Sturgis and the Badland, reaches way beyond the biker according to Michael, “Before outsiders came searching for precious metals, these Native Americans had a long and rich history, albeit not written. Acknowledging this, General William T. Sherman, representing the U.S. government, and Chief Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux signed the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868 to insure that the Native American way of life could continue as they knew it, uninterrupted. The following year, the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed into law by President Andrew Johnson. According to the treaty, other than Indians, only U.S. government agents and the military were allowed into the area. Guaranteeing government protection of the Black Hills as a homeland for the Sioux, the treaty expressly prohibited trespassing by anyone else under penalty of removal and arrest.

“All seemed well until July 1874, when Colonel George Armstrong Custer led a 7th Cavalry expedition through the Black Hills to establish an army post and to see if rumors of gold were true…” You know the rest.

The biker lifestyle blossoms in the photo captions, “When I was 16 I was going to jail and the judge said, ‘Jail or service, boy,’ so I went in the service,” Puppy said. “And I fucked up there, too. Steady. I got an honorable discharge, but by the skin of my teeth. I stayed in trouble the whole time I was in the service and I rode my motorcycle.” That’s an excerpt from Puppy’s words below Michael’s photo, “Coming At You, Wyoming, 1994”.

Motorcycle club life and style is revealed in the shots of brothers strolling down Main Street in Sturgis. “When I first got my “Property of” buckle, I hated it, “Donna said. “l wasn’t going to wear it, so it hung on the back of my chair for three weeks. I got the impression that this guy thought he owned me and controlled me, but I knew I was a single, independent woman and I wasn’t any body’s property. My man wasn’t happy. I didn’t understand that it meant more, to him, to give me that buckle than to give me a diamond ring. Eventually, I started getting to know more people and realized that if you wore the buckle, you were more respected by the brothers in the club. It also provides protection, to a certain degree, because people realize you are with a club and they leave you alone. I’ve been wearing my buckle for almost six years now. I feel naked without it. It’s a part of me and I wear it with pride.”

If you don’t feel a sense of cavern-deep freedom and pure adrenaline joy from this book, you’re missing a link. “Once you get on the bike, it’s like heaven. It’s the best thing in the world,” said “Crazy John,” a B-fuel Harley pilot while at The Sturgis drags.

“Cowboys and bikers have always been connected in my mind, ” Michael professed in one of his captions. “What you see is the full frame, from edge to edge, as canted or cocked as it was in the viewfinder,” Michael added about his images. “While it would be easy to move or eliminate elements to improve a photograph, I have chosen to show it, as it is, or not show it at all.

“Almost all of the images were taken with 35 mm cameras, the exception being some medium format black and white film that I shot with a $10 plastic lens camera in 1999,” Continued Michael about his craft. “In the 1970s the cameras were manual focus, manual exposure, fixed lenses like the Nikon FM and F2. I moved to the F3 and F4 in the 1980s and then to more automatic cameras like Nikon F5s in the 1990s. More recently, I have started to use digital cameras like the Nikon D1 and D1X. Even the automatic cameras were set on manual exposure for the most control, and to this day, regardless of camera, I only use manual flashes.”

If a picture is worth a thousand words this book is worthy of 165,000 at the bare minimum, plus the quotes, Peter Fonda and Dave Nichols input and Michael’s impressions of his many years relishing each shutter-snap from the bed of a pickup, the seat of a sidecar, or in a downpour, as longe as it was taken in the Badlands. It’s more than a photo book, but a memorial to a leather clad and chromed lifestyle representing one of the last American freedoms–Ride Forever.

–Bandit

This book is available through any major bookstore, Motorbooks Int. or through Mike’s site by clickin’ on his banner.