What does it actually feel like to cycle through a city? Beyond infrastructure and policy, cycling is a lived experience—one shaped by movement, the body, fleeting encounters, humour, weather, rhythm, and the atmosphere of the street. These qualities rarely appear in transport statistics, yet they often define what cycling actually feels like.
Street photographer Julie Hrudová has an exceptional eye for these moments. Her photographs do not simply document bicycles in Amsterdam; they reveal how cycling becomes woven into everyday urban life through gestures, emotions, improvisations, and shared moments in public space. In this interview, she reflects on photography as a way of seeing and communicating the lived experience of cycling, and on what visual storytelling can contribute to the way we understand and reimagine better streets and cities.
Could you tell us a little about how this project began? What first drew you to cycling in Amsterdam as a subject for photography?
Chasing Amsterdam is a series, based on a weekly commission for the city’s main newspaper Het Parool. I photograph the streets, looking for interesting, strange or funny moments, especially on how people behave in public space. Amsterdammers and their bicycles are so intertwined that this is inevitably a recurring theme in the series. In the first year of the commission, 2020, the series actually started and concluded with a bicycle image.
Cycling in Amsterdam is often seen as something ordinary and everyday. From your perspective as a street photographer, what does photography make visible about this everyday cycling culture that we might otherwise overlook?
In my photography, I’m presenting the bicycle not only as a practical mode of transport, but also as a part of the culture and personal expression. It is also how we use the bicycle, how we decorate it, what we carry on it (spoiler: a lot!) and how we feel when we ride on it through the city.
In the Netherlands, we are used to many scenes that include bicycles, which are often a special view for people from elsewhere. But I do like to capture situations that will also surprise Dutch people by focusing on humour, peculiarities or relatable issues. Furthermore, I’m interested in patterns of behavior in public space, which I often capture in short-format videos, based on repetition. I’ve made several reels on cyclists in Amsterdam: how we use the bike for moving big objects, Christmas trees or dogs, how we lift our legs when riding through pools of water after rainfall and how we keep cycling in snowstorms. The videos went viral, reaching millions of people and sparking surprised and enthusiastic reactions to Dutch cycling culture and the many ways bicycles are used.
In terms of urban mobility, I think such visual content can show in a fun and impactful way how the bicycle is fully integrated within an infrastructure and culture.
My own research focuses on the lived experience of urban cycling: how cycling is felt through the body, the senses, emotions, speed, encounters, and the atmosphere of the street. Do you think photography can help communicate these lived experiences? If so, how?
Of course. Especially when the photographer also enjoys the experience of cycling. I know for myself that I feel independent and liberated on the bike, slaloming through traffic and pedestrians, deciding my own pace, with my hair in the wind. I enjoy it a lot, on most days. Photography and video have the ability to translate such emotions. Visual storytelling can do much more than showing the bicycle as a practical means of transport; it can communicate the emotion through someone’s look, a couple holding hands when cycling together in golden evening light, children playing in the bakfiets. The lived experience of cycling is also a great part of urban mobility, and I’m convinced that it’s a powerful means to deliver the message on the importance of cycling, to further transform cities.
Your photographs often contain humour, surprise, or small absurdities of everyday urban life. What role do these elements play in your understanding and representation of cycling culture?
These elements make situations interesting for me to capture, as part of daily life in this city. As a photographer, I’m particularly drawn to situations that surprise or move me, such as the mannequin in a bicycle bag, the young man cycling backward with a bowl of strawberries, or the living statue walking with his bike through the city’s main park.
It also depends on whom I work for. In my personal work, and for the newspaper (for this commission my personal view of the city is requested), I focus rather on humour, surprise and absurdities, without adding too much of a context.
When I work on assignments where I need to tell something specific about a location or an issue – for example, for the Museum of the Canals that commissioned me to capture the fragile state of bridges and canal walls – I combine contextual photography with these humorous or peculiar elements to make it informative, but still relatable and engaging. By capturing how cyclists actually experience these spaces, I aim to reveal the complexities and achievements within urban mobility policies on a human scale.
In urban mobility debates, cycling is often discussed through numbers, policies, infrastructure, or safety. What do you think visual storytelling can add to the way we imagine better streets, mobility, and urban life?
While numbers, policies, and safety data are essential, visual storytelling helps create impact by making complex issues more understandable, relatable, and engaging. Above all, it can show lived experiences and – as discussed above – emotion. I think, to really get things moving and further transform cities into more sustainable and inclusive ones, it’s important to make the stakeholders/policy makers truly see, feel and understand the challenges and achievements in urban mobility. I’d say this works when numbers/graphics etc. are combined with visual storytelling, to make that message more complete and impactful.
If this conversation resonated with you, we encourage you to explore more of her work:
