The Mysterious Cycler

Yash Amarwani
2 min readNov 6, 2022
Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

At the first glance this image looks very trippy for the lack of a better word, and that is due to the rotating stairs I guess. But never mind, let’s get into it, break this image into pieces and make it interesting.

The black and white colour scheme gives it a very negative or shady look, for example the person on the cycle, at first glance due to this colour scheme, it seems like he’s running away from someone or something, there are many other possibilities, it might be the morning and he’s just cycling or when observed more particularly, it seems like he’s a professional cycler, because it’s not a normal cycle, it seems to be a racing cycle and we can see this guy wearing proper gear, like gloves, shoes, etc.

Also, looking at the image, it is clear that it isn’t the main road, this is a small street, probably a not well to do street, because of the old structure, the corners of the road are damaged, they seem to have algae growing on them, the door in the front seems to be worn out, the wall on the left hand side also seems to have algae growing on it, this can mostly be because of the fact that water drips from some leaked pipes in that wall, looking at the angle from which the image has been taken it seems like the road is downward sloping which opens up the possibility of this place being on a hilly area.

Lastly, looking at the stairs it seems like there was a shortage of space due to which the stairs have been made in such a way, all in all the place in this image seems to have a very cosy vibe but the colour scheme makes it look like a shady place where some negative things seemed to have happened and the person on the cycle is running from them.

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