THE

MOTORCYCLE
PORTRAITS:
BOBBEE SINGH
MAY 7, 2021 | IN ART + DESIGN | BY DAVID GOLDMAN

T
he Motorcycle Portraits is a project by
photographer/filmmaker David Goldman,
who travels the world making
documentaries, and takes time out to interview
interesting people in the motorcycle scene,
wherever he might be. The result is a single
exemplary photo, a geolocation of his subject, and a
transcribed interview. The audio of his interviews
can be found on The Motorcycle Portraits website.

PhotographedinJhandevalan,Delhi,IndiaJuly14,20193:19pm

GPS:28°39'5.058"N77°12'16.235"E
FIE
LD

Bobbee Singh at his motorcycle workshop in Delhi,

India in 2019, by David Goldman.

“My name is Bobbee Singh. I make motorcycles in

India. I have a company called Old Delhi
motorcycles, building mostly vintage Royal Enfields.
I’m a so-small lad, and I’m a school drop-out, so
pretty much all my life till now – I’m 46 years old –
I’ve been building bikes. It’s for this particular
feeling: when I was an eleven-year-old boy on my
birthday, my parents (my father especially) insisted
that I go to the toilet! And I walked in and I put the
lights on from the outside and there it was – a
faded blue secondhand motorcycle. It’s for that
feeling primarily that I build motorcycles. I love
bringing a little surprise and a little personal and I
love telling a story in a motorcycle. That’s how the
disease started in me.

Then I had a neighbor who used to park his

motorcycle inside his only room, and put on a big
yellow lightbulb and clean it in the night. And I
would just sit around him and put grease on my
face and on my fingers and just be part of it. I think
that’s how it pretty much started. I just fell in love
with them.

Ever since the beginning when I got on a

motorcycle, I have never really been able to look at
it as a scientific phenomenon. You know, it’s kind of
a magical thing for me till this date, it gives me a
mindfuck to see that you sit on something and you
kick it, and a sound comes and you do something
with your left foot, and you release your right hand.
And this thing can take you from here to Himalayas.
And it’s your balance that rides it. So it’s unlike any
other experience, you know, that’s the spiritual side
of it, the spiritual inspiration.

It’s
It’s the
the only
only time
time II get
get to
to move
move and
and
think
think and
and create
create and
and sing
sing and
and be
be
myself.
myself.

All that I am gets complimented by the concept of

motorcycles, especially old motorcycles, because I
have a mind which lives in the past. I love the old
school lines, values, aesthetics, music, style,
especially motorcycles. So it’s given me not just… I’m
not just a professional, it’s given me a purpose. You
know, I wake up for it every day. All that I am able to
put into a motorcycle, it’s everything, man – the
style, the movement. I think I would die if there
were no motorcycles in my life. It’s the only time I
get to move and think and create and sing and be
myself as the ultimate way of rejoicing my life.
Building them is another story, you know, thank
God that I can build motorcycles for people. And I
build them really well: I get into it, piece by piece,
hand carved.

So I get these vintage, old motorcycles from villages

in the interiors of India, and they are dug in the
ground and the owners never want to sell because
they love it. So I somehow get there through a
clandestine network of informers that’s very KGB,
and we reach there and have to deal with their
fucking egos and tell them ‘don’t bury the bike man!
Let me have the bike, sell it to me and let me make
it.’ And I get such bikes and I completely open
them up and restore them, cycle parts and engine
and design on them, and make a unique
motorcycle. These bikes get to Stockholm and Paris
and you name it – New York, London. And on
random days I get these messages of videos of
people just standing around these bikes and the
owner taking a video from the side and loving it you
know, that’s that’s a big reward for me to see.
People really enjoying and loving this motorcycle.”
[Editor: The Vintagent crew first met Bobbee in a
film submitted to the very first Motorcycle Film
Festival in NYC in 2013. He was the subject of a film
about his motorcycle shop in Delhi: ‘Old Delhi
Motorcycles’, which you can watch below.]

Old Delhi Motorcycles The …

David Goldman is photographer and filmmaker

who has traveled the world on projects
documenting human tra"cking, maternal
health and marginalized people. He also
interviews and photographs motorcyclists in
this travels for his series The Motorcycle
Portraits. You can follow his website here, and
his Instagram here. [Photo by Noah Stone]

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33 CCO
OMMM
MEEN
NTTSS

GuitarSlinger
Errr .. ( or should that be GRRRRRR ) ……

……… ” the dog the dog .. he’s doin it again ” ( extra

credit to anyone that recognizes the source o’ that
one ) … e.g. ….the link to Bobbee’s website .

” SAFARI CANNOT FIND SERVER ”

Damn this digital gremlin thing is getting on my

nerves .. right across the board [ yers , mine an
everyone else’s ]

Almost enough for me and mine to simply shut

down and go ‘ Dark ‘ ( analogue ) completely ….
hmmmm …… tempting …. damn tempting

REPLY

Paul D’Orléans
Thanks, we’ve changed the link! Always
frustrating…

REPLY

ANURAG PACHAURI
I just want to contact bobbee singh from Old delhi
motorcycles…so can you please provide me his
contact details like his email address/digits/his shop
address…

REPLY

AAD
DDD CCO
OMMM
MEEN
NTT

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