Cool Photos of Bicycle Couriers

Bicycle Couriers

Totems series by French photographer Alain Delorme shows us how Chinese people transport unbelievable piles of items on their bicycles.

The artist broke the rules of documentary genre by enhancing images in Photoshop to present us with colorful portraits of workers in Shanghai.

Totem by Alain Delorme

Manufactured Totems

Totem

Manufactured Totems by Alain Delorme

Totems

Manufactured Totem

Totems Alain Delorme

Manufactured Totem by Alain Delorme

For more inspiration, check out: Cool Photos of Levitating Girl

  1. Ninja Egg :D

    Wow. ^_^

  2. Darrell

    Are these photoshopped? If not, can they actually ride around with that stuff back there??! Crazy! :O

  3. Paul Manic

    they’re photoshopped like the text says.
    but they’re not only photoshopped, they are bad photoshopped; sorry… just look at the shadows and the lightning of the objects.

  4. Larna

    Simply fantastic….like a fairy tale!

  5. bert

    @paul

    I love the concept. But yes, these images are just way too artificial.

  6. allgewalt

    it’s ture in China…Most of them are scavengers. They can earn 1 Us cent by picking up a plastic bottle or aluminium can

  7. Karen

    these are real pictures, but they’ve been manipulated to enhance certain qualities of the pictures

  8. Phil

    @Karen,
    Qualities such as Quantity….

  9. Benjamin Christine

    great pictures

  10. Art Rock

    Not photoshopped (except for b&w rendition), my own shot:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/artrock2006/3525694002/

  11. Visolela

    Unfortunately while it may be the case for the above pictures – I don’t think there was as much exaggeration as we would like to believe. There are lots of pictures on the net (real pictures taken by tourists or regular joes) of bicycle / tricycle loads around the world – many from China: http://bit.ly/nCEKmg (part of a larger flikr group dedicated to the subject)

  12. Mac

    They are photoshopped, but only in colour and brightness. Many documentaries show people making a living like this in parts of China – and other countries – but they are usually in places suffering extreme poverty, which simply wouldn’t be as clean as these images. Besides, if you were to return to the original source, you could read an explanation of the series, including the editing process.

    Besides that, I think they’re brilliant. I love the colour, and it always fascinates me to see how different people, and indeed differnt cultures, do things.

  13. nidia

    wow… how do they set all of the stuff that high?

  14. Windy

    @Paul & @ Bert I think the photoshop work might have been purposeful. The colors & lighting, in my opinion, amplify the playful exaggeration of the piece.

  15. Dominic

    These are probably Real…

  16. Josh

    Absolutely NOT real….ever lift one of those water jugs? They’re like sixty pounds apiece. No way they would be on a wooden cart like that.

  17. Steve

    It sounds like they made the photos colorful, thus ruining the mood these delivery guys were actually in. But I believe the quantity is not fake

  18. Celia

    @Josh – I’m pretty sure those water jugs are empty. They return them for refunds. And to everyone else, the only thing they photoshopped was the colour, brightness e.t.c. NOT the quantity.

  19. Conan Wu

    these pictures really make it clear to the living status of Chinese people..

  20. Frederick

    @Josh – seriously man? Have you really never emptied the water jug before? There’s no way anyone can non-chalantly carry 4 of those water jugs.

  21. dwain

    these are tricycles, not bicycles. stop calling them bicycles.

  22. Daniel

    @Josh:
    you’re a crank. Aside from the obvious fact they are empty …

    bottle capacity == 3 gallons
    Weight of water == 6 pounds/gal
    ——————————
    weight / bottle == 18 pounds

  23. Jef

    Or you could buy a truck

  24. James

    @paul

    They might be done intentially so.. don’t you think??

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