Tucson photographer Alanna Airitam’s latest project features an unlikely subject for art that ends up on gallery walls: members of Black outlaw motorcycle clubs.
She’s calling it “Black Diamonds” and says it celebrates these often stereotyped men as a sort of modern-day nobility. In her portraits, the men are decked out in their best motorcycle club attire and they stand in front of traditional-looking painted backdrops sometimes in their garages, sometimes in the Tucson desert. They’re all taken at night.
The Show spoke with Airitam more about the project and her inspiration for it.
Full conversation
ALANNA AIRITAM: We hear about these clubs like Hell’s Angels or Outlaws, and I was curious because when I see segregated groups, and not that they’re segregated now, but historically, these groups were segregated. And I was really curious, well, like where, where were the Black men, you know? And so then I was introduced to these other clubs like Chosen Few, like East Bay Dragons, you know. These kind of clubs that were historically Black, and why they formed…