Detroit Bike Rides II

Color photograph of a heavily ivied building at night, a small part of the doorway and ivy leaves are lit up very brightly by a porch light over the door

Here are a couple more galleries of photographs I took on long bike rides through Detroit. When I started these photo bike rides I wanted to present the photos as an entire set for each bike ride. At first I tried posting them on social media as threads. I like the sets much better as galleries here. I wrote a little more about how I’m thinking about these photos in the first Detroit Bike Rides post (along with four other galleries).

I.

June 25 2022. A ride to southwest Detroit, to Hubbard Farms, and back up to Hamtramck. About a sixteen-mile bike ride. I had an errand to run (that is, this was also a practical trip through the city) but I intentionally biked because I wanted a really long ride back home after sundown on the lookout for trees lit up by streetlights. Once you get to New Center you can pretty much stay on painted bike lanes the whole way to Southwest. The area between Hamtramck and New Center, though, you’re mostly just battling car infrastructure.

(Here’s a link to the second gallery if you don’t want to scroll. If you’re using a phone, tap the thumbnails to see the full photo)

II.

June 30 2022. North and west, up along State Fair and up to 8 Mile and then we end up in Ferndale. I was really leaning into wide framings when I took these because I was having fun with how unexpectedly well my camera handled them, and I do like how the emphasis on wide shots holds this set together. I was picking up my car in Ferndale, so there’s no night bike ride home. It is hard to bike across 8 Mile into Ferndale (and probably significantly harder to walk). You can just feel the infrastructure discouraging you from using that space if you’re not in a car.

By Marcus

Visual artist and poet living in Hamtramck, Michigan