The Harley-Davidson Story: Tales from the Archives is a large-format, photography intensive book that tells the story of the iconic Milwaukee motorcycle company largely through objects in the Harley-Davidson Museum’s collection.
It’s the work of Milwaukee writer Aaron Frank, in concert with Jim Fricke, the curatorial director at the Harley-Davidson Museum.
Fricke notes that often the familiar story of Harley-Davidson is told through the perspective of the motorcycles themselves, but this book changes that narrative. "For me the great opportunity here was to tell the Harley-Davidson story in a unique and novel way."
"I think we kind of challenged ourselves to bring forward stories that maybe hadn't been shared before or stories that are particularly unique to the museum," notes Frank. "The museum has such a rich collection of personal artifacts and objects, scrapbooks, clothing, things like that that you wouldn't see in any other collections."
Both Frank and Fricke joined Lake Effect's Mitch Teich to share the story of the book that in turn, tells the story of Harley:
