Tucson photographer Alanna Airitam’s latest project features an unlikely subject for art that ends up on gallery walls: members of Black outlaw motorcycle clubs.
She’s calling it “Black Diamonds" and says it celebrates these often stereotyped men as a sort of modern-day nobility. In her portraits, the men are decked out in their best motorcycle club attire and they stand in front of traditional-looking painted backdrops sometimes in their garages, sometimes in the Tucson desert. They’re all taken at night.
The Show spoke with Airitam more about the project and her inspiration for it.
Full conversation
ALANNA AIRITAM: We hear about these clubs like Hell’s Angels or Outlaws, and I was curious because when I see segregated groups, and not that they’re segregated now, but historically, these groups were segregated. And I was really curious, well, like where, where were the Black men, you know? And so then I was introduced to these other clubs like Chosen Few, like East Bay Dragons, you know. These kind of clubs that were historically Black, and why they formed.
A lot of these biker clubs were formed after World War II. There was a sort of like a surplus of Harley-Davidsons available and they were basically just giving them away. And that’s where a lot of these clubs started to build and form.
But the Black men, I kept wondering, like how could they have joined a club during a time like that? You can’t just join the Hells Angels when you’re a Black man, right? So I was really curious, it just like piqued my curiosity and I wanted to dig into why these clubs were important. So they had to build their own spaces, they had to build their own communities, they had to build their own sort of protection of safety around them, this community so they could ride across the country safely.
LAUREN GILGER: And Chosen Few, the Chosen Few Motorcycle Club that you kind of profile many members of here, is famous for being the first integrated one, right? And this goes back to like the ’60s.
ALANNA AIRITAM: Yeah. Chosen Few started in ’59, and in ’61, they received their first non-Black member. So they, they — in these motorcycle clubs, you’re given a name, right? And this guy down the street from the clubhouse walked by and was like, “Hey, I want to, I want to join your club.” They’re like, “OK.” So they named him White Boy Art.
And he became the first member, white member of the Chosen Few, and it just integrated from there, which was a huge thing at the time because these clubs really went by prison rules, right? Like if somebody got locked up in the system, you needed protection in those spaces. And if you are a Black man in a white club or a white man in a Black club when you’re in the incarcerated system, like you’re not protected. There’s nobody there to protect you. So, that’s why historically they went by these types of rules.
So for Art to join this club, he actually received a lot of, a lot of violence and a lot of harassment towards him for being a member of a Black club. And so, was given a whole lot more respect for basically having to sort of bravery and — audacity — to do such a thing and to protect his brothers like this.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so this is radio, so I’ll ask you to describe these photographs that you have taken for us a little bit. They’re really striking, they look almost like paintings to me. And they evoke sort of old-fashioned, maybe 1800s era paintings of, you know, noblemen. Like, you’ve got these men posing in their kind of official attire in various landscapes or with backdrops pinned up behind them. Describe these for us.
ALANNA AIRITAM: Sure. So, you know, I’m making decisions for these portraits that really work with the narrative of the story that I’m trying to share with the audience. And so, you know, sitting in the garages and listening to these stories, the idea of freedom just kept coming up over and over and over again. And, you know, again, this sort of piqued my curiosity around like how could these men back in the late ’50s experience this level of freedom that they’re talking about when, you know, there’s still sundown towns that they’re having to ride through or, you know, use the Green Book and, you know, it’s police brutality everywhere that you go? Like how could they possibly have had that freedom?
So this idea of freedom was really very prevalent. And as I was thinking about that and thinking about these men riding across the country in this sort of conquerable landscape, it really brought me back to this like, you know, Hudson River school painting type style, you know, and this Americana, this open land, right? And so I wanted to sort of bring this in, this idea of freedom. And so I have these backdrops that are reminiscent of those types of paintings. And they are backdrops, like they look like backdrops in the scene. They’re crumpled, they’re sort of, some of them are held up by clamps, some of them are —
LAUREN GILGER: You can see the edges, yeah.
ALANNA AIRITAM: ... You can see the edges. I mean, there’s, some of the brothers are actually literally holding up this idea of freedom behind them. And this specter of freedom sort of follows these men in through their landscapes, through their towns, through their garages, through their clubhouses. Like this idea of freedom is always there behind them.
So I wanted to also bring in a sense of nobility and respect to these men to sort of try to break the stereotype. You know, I’ve been really fortunate to have the access that I have into these spaces because nobody gets this kind of access. Hunter S. Thompson kind of ruined it for everybody with the Hells Angels.
And so, you know, I take this very seriously. And the men that I’ve met are so incredible, like the warmest, most welcoming group of people. They run the gamut, some of them are rocket scientists, some of them are, you know, museum directors, like there’s all kinds of men involved in in this group. And, and I just really wanted to show them as dignified human beings and not this scary stereotype that we that we put on them.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, 100%. What do they think about these? Like, some of these men who you have photographed in these ways, like what were their reactions when they saw them?
ALANNA AIRITAM: You know, I had a show, the first time I showed this work was at the Etherton Gallery in Tucson and, and I was so excited that many of the men were able to come to the show. And because I don’t really think that they understood what I was doing as I was making these images. I mean, everybody understood they were making a photo with me, but I don’t think they understood what was happening to this work, what this work was about. And, and a lot of these men haven’t, you know, spent a lot of time in these art spaces, you know. They don’t necessarily frequent the museums or the art galleries, right?
And so that evening, during the opening, it was incredible to see their faces see themselves in this way on this wall, you know, in the white box with the frame and the light and all the people. I think it was like they saw themselves very differently than I think that they had seen themselves before.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Well, it’s fascinating. What a gratifying moment, I’m sure, for you.
ALANNA AIRITAM: Yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, we’ll have to leave it there. That is Alanna Airitam, a photographer and artist based in Tucson, joining us to talk about her work, "Black Diamonds." Alanna, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Thank you very much, I appreciate you taking the time.
ALANNA AIRITAM: Thanks, Lauren, I really enjoyed it. Thanks.
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