Black Diamonds and the Chosen Few

The walls of the East Hollywood gallery La Luz de Jesus will host until March 1 a series of art photographs of members of the one-percenter motorcycle club Chosen Few. Shot by artist Alanna Airitam, the “Black Diamonds” collection features intimate portraits of Chosen members, each one staged in front of a stylized backdrop characterizing what Airitam considered characteristic of the club’s (and the club members’) ethos.

Pushback, a Chosen member from Tucson, poses gleefully in a field of cactus, with a backdrop that suggests the open West. Biggs, a Phoenix Chosen, sits with a dog in a dirty garage, with a backdrop reminiscent of a Hudson River School landscape. Boss Mike, a late Chosen Few Nomad present, stands with his chopper in his garage, behind him a drape of woodsy forest.

Students of motorcycle history may know the Chosen Few because of its early member Cliff Vaughs, aka “Soney.” Vaughs was Vice President of the Hollywood Chapter of Chosen Few, and is the man who designed and built the Captain America chopper made famous in the movie “Easy Rider.” He also co-produced the movie and was the source for some of its most essential sequences.

Airitam, a Tucson-based artist, came to the Chosen Few via her partner, artist Wayne Martin Belger. He had patched over to the Chosen Few from another club, exposing Airitam to a subculture that fascinated her. She was particularly interested in the Chosen Few because the club was historically the first (and for a long time the only) integrated outlaw motorcycle club. “These were stories that weren’t being told,” Airitam said the night of the show’s opening. “I wanted to know what it was like to be in that one-percent culture, to be a black man in that culture. I felt like I needed to gather those stories up.”

Airitam started shooting club members in Phoenix in 2019, using Fujifilm GFX 100S film and a Rolleiflex 2.8 twin-lens reflex film camera. The first was her portrait of J Town and Youngsta, standing stone-faced in the Chosen’s traditional black-and-red colors. Portraits of Bam Bam, A-One, Nikon, Doughboy, Deuce, Biggs, Snacks, Slug and others followed. (Her photograph of Pushback now hangs in the Tucson Museum of Art.)

The centerpiece of the Luz de Jesus exhibit is a custom chopper, hand-built over decades by Airitam’s partner Belger. (It’s very, and weirdly, custom: The dipstick is a hidden dagger. A brake lever has insets made of Belger’s daughter’s teeth.) The engine started as a 1969 Harley-Davidson Ironhead. The only Harley parts left on it, Belger said, are the front forks and the rear caliper.

It was Belger’s familiarity with the Chosen, and his introduction to its members, that made Airitam’s portraits possible. And it is Belger’s art that shares the gallery space: Next door to “Black Diamonds” is his “Thoughts and Prayers: Exploring America’s Gun Obsession.” Belger, a longtime friend of gallery owner Billy Shire, is a machinist by vocation, photographer by avocation, and lifelong biker. His photography—in this collection and in others – is built around a singular concept: He builds his own camera, from scratch, in a style designed to catch the attention of his intended subjects.

In this case, the camera for “Thoughts and Prayers” is a massive metal machine built from and decorated with military hardware – bullets, bullet casings, cartridges, etc. The viewfinder is a site from a machine gun. For this collection, Belger has traveled the country, visiting gun shows and gun competitions, asking people to “Show Your Pride with Second Amendment Photography.” The results are startling.

Airitam will next feature in her “Black Diamonds” project the East Bay Dragons, said to be the oldest all-black 1% motorcycle club in the U.S.