Dirty Pictures

Collaboration is cool. So is fostering a love for the still image and finding other avenues to publish outside of the realm of newspapers. Dirty Pictures does both.

A group of bad-asses in Portland (Rob Finch, Torsten Kjellstrand, Jamie Francis, Pam Royal, Mike Davis, Tim Labarge and Heidi Swift and Deb Pang Davis) decided to combine their infatuation with both photography and cyclocross -- and pdxcross was born.

50,000 images were whittled down to the best 160, and laid out over 120 pages. The result is a great little self-published book called Dirty Pictures, which documents the 2008 cyclocross season.

Cyclocross is guts out all the time. No hiding. No resting. No pretense. No logic.

Here is the formula: Show up and wait for the start whistle. Race all out for 45 minutes. Jump over barriers. Run what you can't ride. Claw your way up what you can't climb. See stars. Go blind. Explode. Heave. Taste Blood.

Repeat.

You can almost taste the grime and grit. You can almost taste the passion and pain. You can almost hear the cowbells in the crowd.

In stunning b&w, pdxcross captured the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and the triumph of trying. Their pictures offer an insight into a subculture. For the love of mud, sweat and tears, cyclocross riders come together to revel in the ride. And they find that the pain of pushing oneself through ungodly obstacles turns competitors into compadres and friends into family.

I applaud the efforts of the pdxcross crew. The book truly was a labor of love and as Rob Finch said, "although it's not going to change the world, we hope it makes people happy who look at it."

Dirty Pictures is something that's sure to make both lovers of photography and cyclocross cheer. And for me, in a time of shrinking budgets and news holes, it's also a great lesson in covering your community in new and different ways.

Get your copy today.

19 January 2009 by Melissa Lyttle

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