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The Dirty Dozen motorcycle gang on a weekend trip into the desert, near Phoenix, Arizona, in 1979
At the age of 38, convinced I was still a teenager, I bought my first motorcycle. Biking can make you feel immortal but can also give you painful reminders that you’re not. My final fall from grace, well, the saddle, came in 1985. Etched in my memory because following day I flew to the USA to take part in the “Day in the Life of America” book shoot, with my fingers skinned and a nasty hole in my leg. Fortunately, being among some 200 of my very competitive peers seemed to provide a speedy remedy!
The Dirty Dozen motorcycle gang on a weekend trip into the desert, near Phoenix, Arizona, in 1979
A few years earlier I’d decided I just had to do a photographic book on biking. At the time there were great journalists, mostly working with California based magazines, who were writing about biking as a philosophical journey, almost a religion. They inspired me to shoot a dozen essays on different a...

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Patrick Ward
Patrick Ward
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Patrick began his freelance career in the 1960s, shooting for the newly created colour magazines of the Observer and Sunday Times, and later for the Telegraph. In the 1970s he began his still continuing record of the English at play, which has produced three books, with the latest, “Being English”, published last year. In 1981 Patrick spent a year traveling and photographing across America on a Bicentennial Grant and these pictures led to assignments with the Smithsonian and National Geographic Traveler magazines. While Patrick has enjoyed a long career shooting for European and American magazines he still feels his best work springs from self assigned projects. He is presently photographing a book on Londoners at play and a second project on life on the River Thames, the latter inspired by the fact that his home is a houseboat on this great river. mail@patrickwardphoto.com http://www.patrickwardphoto.blogspot.com
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