Divvy Bikes Stories

This photo places me in August 2021 just about to begin my penultimate school year before retiring, as well as a year and a half into the pandemic. Dread, with so little wonder, is ahead of me and then: this magical light. 

Dumped into the lake, a short enough time ago, this bike’s light submerged, still shines and flashes, under water, in the dawn. The glow stumbled me into a double take. How eerie, whimsical and breathtaking all at the same time. A spark, a light. 

Divvys, the bikes that belong to Chicago’s bike share program are evocative to me. When I see riders of all kinds moving around the city, I am full of joy because they remind me of my life long experiences biking.  And, when I come upon them, left alone in odd places, and I realize they have been abandoned,  I still feel joy in seeing them this way, but there is an added layer of melancholy, curiosity, kinship and story that inspires me.

Once I started taking photos of these abandoned Divvy bikes, I began to see them everywhere,  more and more– in Chicago and then, in other cities with similar bike share systems. Each bike connoted a human experience because the last thing to touch them was a person; when, why,  where and how they were dumped took on meaning for me. What was the motivation to take the bike and then leave it? Who are and what happened to their riders? How did they get to where they needed to go next?  As I thought about their personal stories, the bikes became proxies or even shadow remnants of the people who had ridden and left them. This was what I thought I was taking their photos for and why I liked them.

But then I showed a work friend the photo of this underwater bike with its flashing light.  She joked that it felt like us at work, trying to shine our lights into the virtual world. After that, I think about the bikes differently. I no longer photograph what isn’t there about a bike, but take its portrait, finding its story, and the connections between myself and others. 

Seeing reflections of myself in and out of these covid times in the abandoned Divvy bikes is healing and offers guidance in moving forward.