Destroying Everything

Ricky Adam, London U.K. Photo by Paul Bliss

*** BMX and punk are two things I have been involved with for many years, long before I ever picked up a camera. I’ve ridden BMX bikes since I was 12 years old.

26 years on I still ride, and not in a midlife crisis sort of way either. It just feels right - it’s always felt right. The same goes for taking pictures.

Photography came later. It was something that started out as a hobby. My friends were all into punk, bikes and skateboading. The things I photographed were a direct response to the things I was involved with. It was intuitive, as well as a catalyst for picking up a camera in the first place.

I’ve never considered myself one of those people who constantly dwells in the past.

But looking at photos has a strange way of pulling me back there. In some ways, it’s uncomfortable. But photographs are inherently a physical document of a time, leaving behind a trail of film, paper and hard drives full of memories.

When I was putting this book together, the photographs reminded me of what it was like to be a teenager: the fire inside, the restlessness, the drudgery, the boredom and monotony of school; tearing around on my bike at night listening to Dag Nasty on my walkman, and the batteries dying on the way home.

I got into BMX growing up in the suburbs of Northern Ireland in the early 90’s. At the time it was considered totally ‘uncool’. BMX had had its hey-day in the 80’s and in most people’s eyes the ‘craze’ was officially dead. The fact that we rode bikes clearly marked my friends and I out as ‘losers’.

While others were in the pub or at home passively watching T.V. we were out blasting around on our bikes or going to punk shows. Bands such as Gray Matter, The Descendents, Fugazi, and Naked Raygun guided me through those teenage years.

They eased the drama of being young and somewhat directionless. They gave me strength, inspired me, and to some degree kept me sane. The perfect antidote to the mainstream bullshit that otherwise surrounded us. Some people would say that these activities are part of a subculture or counterculture. To me it just felt right.

Fast forward about 6 or so years to when I eventually got a camera. Everything that I had been into suddenly took on new meaning once I had the new-found ability to document what I was seeing. It was as if some sort of trip switch went off inside of me.

Something was set in motion, the fuse was lit. My only regret was that I hadn’t picked up a camera sooner.

The following photographs reflect that same attitude, people who have a different way of looking at their environment.

I wanted to share their optimism, energy and enthusiasm whilst destroying and laying to waste the conditioned, consumer based society that we live in today.

A lot of the people I photograph have a self-destructive personality (I’m going to include myself in that category as well). I think everyone is self-destructive in one sense or another. It’s all part of being human.

So, with that said. This isn’t a book about ‘BMX’ or a book about (for lack of a better word) ‘punk’. It’s a collection of photographs of people who do their own thing their own way and live life from the heart, no matter what the consequences. This was the impetus for putting this book together in the first place.

They say the heart rules the mind. It’s the only way to live my life...

- Ricky Adam

*** No need for interim reviews and reports to score their performance. No need for pay rewards and gift incentives to motivate these people. Their love, passion, creativity and pure enthusiasm are the only factors in driving these people forward. Ask them why and they will say, ‘It’s just what I do.’ They have morphed body and soul into a lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle that can’t be quantified or artificially created. Like-minded people bond together and without any effort a community and scene is created. It’s organically grown from the seed of a DIY ethic and is too spontaneous to put procedures into place to replicate any element of the lifestyle.

You may think it looks bleak, disruptive and unruly without anything to be optimistic about. Perhaps at times you could be right, but the same could be said for elements of anyone’s life, the difference with these communities is that they can see and accept the bleakness and utilize it. If they want something then nothing is a barrier to them.

Their rewards can be as simple as the acknowledgement from friends and peers with the chance to do it all again another day. Their initiative would be unselfish and encouraging to all who seek it. Everyone who wants it can embrace their joy, fun, pain, frustration and adulation.

There is never a sense of repetitive drudge of work, eat, tv, sleep.

Form function structure personality all imposed as outcasts in your lives they are the vision of abandonment without despair. They cast a faded shadow into a dark landscape that they merge into. No glossy reflections, a world that reflects their beings is a world that is void of emotion of responsibility acceptance and fear.

These visual renegades are rebelling against no one physically but are challenging the world’s perception of normal coherent and conforming. Aliens to your world but not to their communities that thrive only on the now, influenced by the past but turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the potential of the future.

To write them off as individual is disrespectful and you can’t collectively dismiss them. They are the misunderstood, social irritant that grates at your normal psyche and your polished lifestyle. Why embrace what gives you such disgust? Why accept that which you don’t understand? Why acknowledge a world of dirt and neglect? Just keep walking past their landscape and it’s architecture, resplendent in it’s decaying glory.

- Nick Coombes