Customer Reviews

Bicycle Messenger: Photography by Kyle Shepard

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This book is a great collection of photography created by a bike messenger highlighting the bike messenger culture, and showing an honest collection of the people who do this often thankless job. I commend him for some good pictures and for the time and effort he spent putting together this collection.

This book's compelling photography depicts the humanity behind the life and labor of the people who keep the upper class functioning. The cliche "one picture is worth a thousand words" does not do this book justice. Some of these photos are so touching it brings a lump to the throat. There are photos from around the world, each depicting something different yet all with something in common. The photographer, Kyle Shepard, has great talent. Every lawyer, banker, stock broker, real estate agent, and professional who utilizes the services of messengers ought to own this book, and refer to it from time to time so as to never forget the people behind the delivery of important documents. I think we will see Kyle Shepard become one of the great photographers of our time. He has a special talent for capturing humanity.

I have been a messenger for the past few years and I really enjoyed this book. There is no text save for the first couple pages, just a lot of great photos capturing the life of messengers around the world at work and at play and everything inbetween. I strongly recomend it for messengers and people who are interested in messengers.

There are no words. This is a 136 page book of black-and-white photographs taken by a bicycle messenger documenting his experiences. There are pictures of messengers from The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Tokyo, Norway, New York and lots from San Fransisco. Not all of them are great. A number of them are under-exposed. Sometimes shadows hide the subject's face. Messenger outdoor parties look more like camps for homeless people than the Hollywood image of style-conscious college-educated young men. Pictures of messenger races/championships/parties/rallies, a wedding and pictures of messengers at work make this a valuable resource documenting actual messenger life, unedited. Whatever its shortcomings, this is the real thing.