Hell Boys

Visual research and ideas.

Sonny Barger.

As part of my background research I've been reading the journals of Sonny Barger, one of the Hells Angels leading figure heads from when the club first formed  in the 50's in Southern California. He is one of the few members of the club to ever publish any documentation of his experiences with the club.  My case study will be based upon a chapter in East Anglia, however it's important to see the bigger picture in terms of understanding the clubs social and cultural history. Because the nature of my chosen story is quite a sensitive subject, I will make my images slightly ambiguous, so not to directly offend or name any specific members of the Chapter. I hope to produce work that'll look beyond the stigmas of tattoos, and media spun hearsay; instead to perceive something of the personality within

Compiling my research for this project has been pretty interesting,  particularly having the opportunity to engage with the people involved directly, instead of aquiring knowledge just through books and online articles. 

When I first started this project, I wanted to practise my observational drawings of motor bikes. Here are some images I took from my uncle's bike shed. Most of the bikes are 1950's BSAs, which aren't used by the Hells Angels,  however I wanted to see for myself how the bikes were constructed and how they worked, so looking at the individual parts helped me piece together an understanding of how they worked.