ghost bikes live on

With the death toll of New York City bicyclists on the rise this year, a situation Mayor Bill de Blasio referred to as an “emergency,” it’s no surprise that the danger on our streets is on the minds of many New Yorkers.

That’s why it seems almost fated that photographer and Brooklyn resident Genea Barnes’ exhibit, “Don’t Forget Me: Ghost Bikes Photographs,” opened at W83 Ministry Center on the Upper West Side on Tuesday, July 23.

The exhibit showcases images from Barnes’ 2015 book of photographs that she took of ghost bikes, which are memorials to those who died in cycling-related accidents. The memorials feature white-painted bikes placed at or near the accident sites.

An Ongoing CrisisThat the show is opening after the rash of cyclist deaths in the city is a coincidence — Barnes got the idea for the exhibit last year after she met someone who works at W83 — but she said it speaks to the ongoing nature of the crisis. “I don’t really think there are any accidents in this world,” Barnes said. “The timing of how it’s all falling together seems kind of magical ... Even though I finished shooting this project and working on it a number of years ago.”

Spark of InspirationThe project began after Barnes saw her first ghost bike in New York City in 2010. She was moved by the visual power of the memorial. “There was just something about knowing how the person died,” Barnes said. “You see roadside memorials a lot. You see flowers and stuff when somebody’s killed, it’s on the street. But that impact of knowing how they died really struck me.”

After seeing that first bike, Barnes sought out ghost bikes in every city she visited. She eventually decided that the project was “more important than wherever [she] happened to be looking for ghost bikes” and started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a road trip down the East Coast, through the Midwest and up to Canada in order to photograph the bikes.

A Magic Journey Over the course of 27 days, Barnes traveled 6,000 miles, visited 50 cities and photographed 65 bikes. She found the memorials through online research and by reaching out to local cycling communities.

“There was some magic on that trip, and I did get to talk to a couple of people that saw [accidents] ... One family actually had the ghost bike on their lawn. And I didn’t want to go onto their property so I knocked on the door and talked to them, and they told me the story of how they had gotten a permit to place the ghost bike. And the woman that had hit the biker lived around the corner and she threw a fit about it, so they moved the ghost bike to their yard as a permanent memorial. And we’re still in contact today.”

Raising AwarenessThe exhibit runs through September 8. Barnes will be giving a free talk at W83 on Tuesday, July 30 at 7 p.m., when she plans to discuss ideas of “spatial awareness” and “people living together in a thoughtful way to encourage loving coexistence.” Her book will also be on sale at the talk for $20.

“Mostly I’m looking forward to opening up the conversation about being cognizant of where we are in space around each other and other things,” Barnes said. “I ride a bike for transportation. I’m not like a super crazy bike person that lives on my bicycle, but we are so in our heads and so in our devices. I mean, how many people do you bump into on the street? Those are the interactions that don’t cause any harm. And if as a whole we can be more cognizant of our social surroundings, we will keep each other safe.”