[No es que  sean gran cosa, pero por si las moscas, aseguro que no hay truco de cámara o de edición de video. ¿Dónde estaría la gracia?]

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If you’ve ever been asked by a woman on a bicycle if she can take your picture, it was probably Jo Ann Santangelo. Over the last two years, this talented photographer has become a regular documenter of Austin’s “weird” culture.

Jo Ann has had a gift and passion for photography for as long as she can remember. She says, “I always photographed as a kid; it’s just something I loved doing. I always had a camera with me.” After growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, Jo Ann attended school for business, but soon realized that it was not the right field for her. At 21, she and a friend decided to drive down to Arizona and live there for a while. Once there, Jo Ann began photographing more and more. Eventually, another friend of Jo Ann’s landed a six month internship back in Boston. Jo Ann decided to accompany her and upon arriving, she got her first job in the photo industry. “At that point, I had never even used a 35 mm camera,” Jo Ann notes. Yet she began working at a camera repair shop that also sold cameras and rented studio space for photo shoots. This gave Jo Ann hands-on training and experience in every facet of the industry in a very short period of time. When her six-month stint was up, her friends pitched in and gave her a Nikon F100, her first 35 mm SLR camera. She still uses it to this day, carrying it around wherever she goes.

Upon returning to Phoenix, Jo Ann got a job managing a photo studio. This allowed her to work with fine art photography for the first time. Pretty soon, she found herself assisting photographers on shoots, a job she would perform off and on for the next five years. Jo Ann eventually returned to Boston and worked as a photographer’s assistant on fashion and editorial shoots. “I worked on photo shoots for Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones, and lots of top model stuff,” she recalls. “It was a good learning experience, but it never struck my passion. I liked photographing real people living their everyday lives.” Upon visiting a friend in Austin, Jo Ann fell in love with the city and knew that it was where she had to be. She moved here in September 2006 and soon realized that bicycles serve as efficient vehicles of transportation. Jo Ann began to ride, and one day found herself in a troubling situation – her bike broke down. In that moment, she saw an interesting woman and asked if she could take her photo. The woman agreed, and a new series was born: “Austin Seen,” consisting of over 2,000 portraits of Austinites. Jo Ann soon found a way to integrate her love of photography with her love of bicycling. A few months after she arrived in Austin, she became a pedicab driver downtown. This not only gave her flexibility with her hours – allowing her to spend a good amount of time on her photography – but it gave her a new perspective, one that would ultimately lead to a photo series of her fellow pedicab drivers entitled “Pedicab Portraits.” The series was then exhibited at the Kerbey Lane Cafe.

In recent months, Jo Ann has found great success in the Austin art scene. She currently has her work on display at the Authentic City Gallery and Girl Next Door. She is sharing a joint show with Kate Payne at Progress Coffee, and is looking forward to an upcoming show at Thunderbird Coffee. Not only that, but she was once chosen to be one of 12 featured artists in Art City Austin, an annual event put on by Art Alliance Austin. So what is next for Jo Ann Santangelo? She was recently selected from a pool of 5,000 candidates to be one of 23 students attending the International Center of Photography in New York City this fall. After that, she says, “My goal is to take what I call ‘Austin Seen’ worldwide – I want to travel around with a bike and photograph people living their lives. It tells a story.”

You can find Jo Ann’s work at JoAnnSantangelo.com. Also, check out her documentary on youtube directed by Katy Stafford. ■

April D. Boland is a regular contributor to NÜ magazine and Kross Media. She also has her own webzine for women called Della Donna. To download the NÜ designed PDF with samples of Jo Ann's photography go to www.krossmedia.net.

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É totalmente compreensível que os brasileiros não possuam o hábito de usar a bicicleta para se locomover. Ainda que tangível nas pequenas cidades ou áreas mais rurais, o ato de pedalar é quase sinônimo de insanidade para quem vive nos grandes centros urbanos do país, onde o tráfego de veículos é inversamente proporcional ao baixo número de ciclovias.

Mas se o cenário é desanimador, não há melhor remédio que o próprio reforço da prática. Só assim governo e sociedade civil enxergarão a necessidade de investimento em infra-estrutura e educação no trânsito. Por isso, tire a magrela da garagem, escolha um trajeto de ruas mais tranqüilas, de preferência use um capacete e “pés à obra”.

Não faltam motivos para pedalar: ajuda a perder uns quilinhos, tonifica a musculatura, aumenta o fôlego, exercita a mente (afinal você aproveita para colocar as idéias em ordem), economiza o dinheiro da gasolina ou do bilhete de ônibus, não polui o ambiente, permite driblar os congestionamentos e, principalmente, permite ver a cidade melhor, o que é fundamental para os que carregam uma máquina fotográfica consigo.

Cardápio biker: Bike Nation, I Want To Ride My Bicycle, bicycle_culture, CYCLOMANIA e Vintage Bikes

Fotos de Tamara'S_gravity, ksnyan_1975, muha..., [auro], [Zakkaliciousness] e sidemedia.nl.

Innovate or Die is a bit of a grim sounding name for a competition that has produced some surprising and diverse innovations. Sponsored by Google, the challenge was to develop something new that is powered by a bicycle, and that can be shown to benefit the planet in some way.

One of the most outstanding ideas, and also the winning entry, Aquaduct is a mobile, pedal powered water filtration system, designed to use human energy to provide drinking water anywhere in the world, particularly in places that do not have grid electricity. This innovative bike was the winning submission in the Innovate or Die competition. Built as a tricycle, it has a large reservoir to hold the impure water. When you start pedalling, this water is pumped out of the reservoir, and through a series of filters, ending up in the transparent container at the front.

It means that you can generate and carry drinkable water during a journey, but it also has the facility to disengage a clutch mechanism, so that the pedals power only the filtration system and not the wheels. The whole unit then becomes a stationary, human powered water filtration system that needs no electricity.

The competition website is very pretty but not ever so informative. The best overview of the entries is on the competition's YouTube channel, where you can see stuff that ranges from brilliant to truly crazy. I think my favourite is probably the wonderful Renotee and his gondola - or, as he put it, "California's (if not world's) first electrically assisted recumbent pedicab" - love the wicked laugh near the end of the video:

I also loved the cardboard pedal - or paddle - boat, and particularly its name, "My Magic Swirling Ship":

All the entries are worth looking at - there are bicycles driving carousels, coffee grinders, washing machines and even welding machines. It's pretty inspiring, especially as by saving electricity I might also manage to burn off some of my post-Christmas flab.

Amanda

I am completely in love with the trioBike, a three-in-one bicycle, carrier bike and child buggy designed by Danish company, DesignAgenda. It's so cleverly made, you don't need any tools to change it from one function to another, and the retro look just oozes quality.

Fulfilling the highest of Denmark's child safety standards, the carrier can take a load of up to 80kg, equivalent to two children up to about 9 years old. In its buggy function it is stylishly upholstered, and has fitted with five point safety harnesses. As a load carrier, the seat can be folded up to make extra space. It seems a great solution for people who would love to give up their cars, but can't because they need the carriage capacity. This great little video shows how the designers envision it as part of a modern lifestyle:

Windows Media format

Quicktime format

It's available to order on-line from the lifestyle and design store, funktionally (where I could quite happily buy almost everything). You'll need deep pockets, though - it retails to the UK at £2,065. It's a lot for a bicycle, I'll grant you, but as a multi-function vehicle it could take the place of your car and child buggy, help you keep fit and help the environment. With no road tax or fuel costs, it actually seems very good economy.

Amanda