FLIGHT

A love letter to small towns from photographer Buck Squibb

By VITTI Cycling

February 24^th, 2023

There are people who impact your life in ways you can't imagine when you first meet them. Photographer and friend Buck Squibb is one of those people. He has been a constant source of inspiration over the years. His singular vision is quiet and literary, his work transcends the medium. Buck makes images that are beyond unexpected, images that are glances into his world, the things seen out of the corners of your eyes that are poetic and once seen can't be ignored. Buck has a way of shooting that effects how you see your own world, making you take notice of the small moments and simple gestures, the purely photographic things that resonate more so for their honesty.

Buck's world bleeds into yours, once you spend time with his work you can't help but to come away with a refined sense of your own. It's what great photography does, it lasts, you carry it with you.

It is an incredible pleasure to be able to have Buck shoot this extraordinary collection of images for us. These photos were made in a small town by bike, exploring all the quiet places from a past but not forgotten way of life.

See more of Buck's work here.

These are the forgotten roads, the drive by towns, the ones you never stop in from the highway. The towns that long ago had industry and families and a sense of place. These are the towns where children rode bikes all over, jumping off curbs and racing through fields.

These towns were vital and teeming with life, towns where people raised families, whose children have now all left. Storefronts are dated and dusty with lonely mannequins selling fashions of a time ago. On the corner an old man sits behind the counter of a typewriter repair shop that is somehow still in business. There is a diner by the train tracks where the coffee is still one dollar. The closed up factories sit silent by the riverside with broken glass and graffitied walls, the pavement cracked with weeds growing wild. The streets, at one time busy with people working three shifts, are mostly empty now. The town is like a time capsule, a throwback to when life was busy and people met at the diner and talked and laughed and planned for the future.

There are a few people milling about in the sunshine on the corners and passing the storefronts. They still move through their days as they have for years, still greet each other with a wave from across the street, still meet for coffee and pie. They sit at the diner and talk politics, talk about their kids who have left for new lives in the cities, some visit but not often. They talk about their grandkids and how big they are getting, wishing they spent more time with them.

The streets are a place to cruise slowly, a wonderland to ride through, mostly deserted and quiet. The hum of life is subdued, there are hardly any cars on the roads. In summer you can ride alongside the edges of these towns along farmland and watch the hawks circling in the sky. You can hear grasshoppers in the fields and the flap of crows flying by. You can roll past the closed shopping mall imagining a time when it was full of people.

There is always a place to swim in these towns. A small pond or a lake where you can get off the bike and sit by the shore, wading in to cool off and to sit a while and watch the clouds slide by, the birds flying towards the ocean.

These towns are everywhere alongside highways, in between cities and in the valleys alongside rolling rivers. They are a respite from our busy lives, places we can visit and remember a time past, and ride through streets rich with memory.