Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler – Bicycle Portraits

www.bicycleportraits.co.za and www.dayonepublications.com

Bicycle Portraits – everyday South Africans and their bicycles.
The Bicycle Portraits project has raised over $25,000 though Kickstarter during their first and second successful fundraising efforts. Nic Groblerand and Stan Engelbrecht would like to thank everyone who has so kindly pledged towards the Bicycle Portraits project so far. They are currently spending as much of their time as possible traveling through South Africa by bicycle to meet and photograph as many fellow cyclists out there as they can find, and the Bicycle Portraits book will be completed in the first half of 2011.

Why we are doing this…
As you’ll see we are not photographing people who ride purely for exercise or recreation, but instead we are focussing on those who use bicycles as an integral tool in their day-to-day existence. We’ve noticed that in South Africa, especially in the major centers, very few people use bicycles as mode of transport. This is very strange since we have no proper public transport infrastructure, and that which does exist is expensive and unsafe. Given all the benefits of cycling – independence, fitness, cost-effectiveness, environmentally friendly – we would love to encourage the use of bicycles in South Africa amongst all social classes.

Our long term goal…
Through publishing this book, we want to be able to assist the underprivileged cycling community through our project – be it teaching bicycle maintenance skills, providing necessities like helmets, tires, tubes, locksâ?¦ It would be great to create a support structure for the people who appear in the book – this could be a trust funded by a percentage from sales of the cover price, or a charity set up in the name of the people who appear in the book etc. Ultimately we want to promote cycling as a means of independent transport to empower the underprivileged, and in fact, to encourage everyone capable to ride a bike as an alternative to driving a car, or even using public transport. We hope that this will lead to the kind of infrastructure development that is designed with all people in mind, not just cars.

Please visit – kck.st/c09uOF or www.bicycleportraits.co.za – to get involved or find out more about their project
via osocio.org