Fear no Bitch
Ian Willms
Washington DC, USA 2013
A woman wears a necklace embossed with the slogan 'Fear No Bitch' at a Greyhound station in Washington, DC.
What began a century ago as a commuting service for iron miners, the Greyhound Bus has become a ubiquitous presence in movies, songs and fantasies. From a trope of freedom to a holdout of racial segregation to union picket line murders, the Greyhound Bus Lines was a flawed icon of underclass struggle. Ian Willms went in search of answers as to why The Hound seemed to exude a strangled, sad magic. Strangers' stories crisscrossed a continental web of concrete and dirt. They rode The Hound to find work, escape the past, reconnect and find love.
‘44 hours non-stop to New Orleans. 70 hours non-stop to Vancouver. Dreams bleed into reality as reality melts into dreams. Lights go on, lights go off, no smoking or drinking in the coach, secret sips, transfer at 4 a.m. Eat when you can. I dropped my toothbrush in a bathroom sink, went looking for a place to eat and got robbed at gunpoint for my cameras; the cops said I was stupid. I bought a $7 camera at a thrift store and got back on The Hound, headed for home. The yellow line went from solid to broken, solid to broken, in its unrelenting pattern.’
Specification
Ian Willms
Ian Willms is a post-documentary photographer whose multi-year photo essay projects often address the intimacies of power struggles, inequities and profound compromise.
Ian's Mennonite ancestors fled violent persecution in Russia before settling in Canada, where Ian grew up in a subsidized apartment building for at-risk women. His formative years were steeped in a community with lived experiences in mental health, addiction, homelessness, poverty, racism and gender-based oppression.
Ian has shown his work around the world, including the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, G44 the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto, F3 in Berlin and the Coalmine Gallery in Switzerland. His recent self published books Sick Days I and Sick days II, visual assemblages of the fear, distrust and politicisation which swept into the global pandemic, are now sold out.
Your Print
When will I receive my print?
We produce prints in a batch every two weeks. Shipping can take up to one week in the UK, and two to three weeks internationally. Orders should be received within 3-5 weeks depending on your location.
What will I receive?
Your print will be posted flat, in a protective sleeve, to avoid damage or curling in transit. Prints come with a Panos Prints provenance certificate with background information about the image and the photographer.
The paper is A4 sized, the image will be smaller than A4 with a white border around it - see Image Specification for exact image size. Borders will be laid out as demonstrated by the print images on the site. We do not provide framing services and images of framed prints are only meant to be illustrative.
Print Care
Paper and ink
We print on Hahnemuhle Baryta FB, an archival fibre based 350gsm fine art paper. It is a bright white paper with a traditional character finish and heavy weighting. This paper has long been the industry standard paper for digital printing.
What is a giclée print?
Giclée comes from French and literally means ‘squirt’, referring to the spray of very fine drops of ink that produce an inkjet print. We print with archival paper and pigment inks to the accepted standards of fine art giclee printing found within the collectors market. Prints should last over a hundred years and with care longer than this. Avoiding extremes of light, heat and humidity will help prolong the life of your print.