Two years ago, I visited Ian Sutton of Icarus Frames at his workshop in Boston and shot some photos. I ended up naming the post “The Son of Daedalus” after the Greek tale. For those unfamiliar, Daedalus was a great inventor and he had two sons, Icarus and Iapyx. Icarus and Daedalus wanted to fly like the birds, so they fashioned wings of wax, string and feathers.
Before pushing his son into flight off a cliff, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus ignored his father and fell to his death. It’s a very morbid tale but Ian found it suitable as a name. Even before he had a name for his small framebuilding company, he used to attach feathers to his bikes, which later became his head badge.
I’ve been wanting to shoot more photos of Ian working in his small shop here in Austin so I took my Hasselblad, the 50mm CF T* lens, a tripod and some Ilford Delta 3200 over to do just that. The grainy, low light photos capture his shop environment quite well. As he worked away, sanding and filing on a new road bike, I tried my best not to get in his way. His shop is small but utilized efficiently as his tools and frames occupy every inch. I felt like the standard approach would be to try and bring more light into the film, but the dark exposures turned out perfect.
There will be a lot of Icarus on the blog in the forthcoming months, with Lauren’s bike on the way, my MAX fork, Ross’ light tourer and Chris’ road, pictured here.
See more below.
