1 mile = 1.60934 kilometers.

That is the distance from the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to the Marin Headlands.

1.7 miles = 2.737 Kilometers.

That is the total length of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Jake has walked that length thousands of times. Over and over. Every day. For six and a half years. Over 13,000 miles, he tells me. With his cameras

And then one day he just didn’t go back. The plan changed.

I met Jake in Seattle, back before disc brakes and Di2. We would go on rides together before normal people could afford GPS or a power meter. After, I would go to work at my hotel and tell my coworkers where I had ridden, as there was no Strava map to show. It all felt a bit more “real” back then.

I moved to New York on the last day of 2010, and fell out of touch with Jake, and most of the guys I rode bikes with back in Seattle. But according to a long scroll through the DM’s, Jake and I reconnected in 2016. And since around that time, I’ve become a huge fan of what he has dedicated his life to photographing.

When you walk into my apartment in Copenhagen, the first thing you see on the wall is a photo by Jake. It’s a man with his throat slit, sitting in a bus stop, a woman holds his neck to stop the bleeding as three women pass by in the background, and a man sits next to the victim, looking totally unphased by it all.

Very Instagram-unfriendly, and that’s why I love it.

On a table in my living room is a book by Jake called Mad World. My copy is numbered #21 (!!!) and in the back is written “Photos Taken While I Was A Bike Messenger 2009-2018”. Inside are photos of people…all kinds of people doing all kinds of things. If you open one of my drawers, inside you will find a stack of little plastic sleeves filled with his prints and postcards. Everything is the opposite of the photos I take. Everything is the epitome of what a photographer should do.

In 2024 and 2025 I visited Jake twice to take photos of him and his hundreds of rolls of undeveloped photos from the Bridge. He had already finished with his bridge project. Or perhaps “finished” is the wrong word. He had already changed his approach project. Many things led to this decision: A Series of Unfortunate Events.

On 1 January 2024, the Suicide Deterrent Net was completed, and with that, the project ironically died in a way.

Jake has seen people jump and he has talked even more of them out of doing so. He’s befriended the ravens (Jaws & Nikki Sixx) that followed him on his bridge-traverses. He watched the skies of 2020 turn to nearly the same “International Orange” that the bridge is coated in, as the state was devoured by wildfires. He’s documented new graffiti as it appears, and the retaliatory cover-up paint by the civil servants to make it disappear. He’s photographed container ships entering, and mega cruise ships departing the Bay.

My favorite story is from 26 January 2020. DeCarlis “DC” Wilson’s last day alive. I’d love to tell it to you, as it’s totally wild and sad. Instead, I think you should go to @Jake_Ricker on Instagram and scroll back to 5 February and read it for yourself.

At Jake’s desk, I’m shown collages of images of the ravens, container ships, and the images on Google Street View featuring Jake. I’m shown the retaliatory photos he takes of the Google spy-cars. I ask him why he chose the Bridge. He shows the image that started it for him, and then he shows me the images he has collected by others which feature the bridge. He shows me The Pillar, by Stephen Gill.

New York Fashion Week just ended for me, and before I head off to finish out the FW26 season in Milan and Paris, I took the time to write this all down. The photos that Jake creates, (MOST of which are still not even developed, laying in large Ziplock bags in his fridge), are the kind of photos which most photographers should aspire to shoot. The longevity behind his still-ongoing Bridge project, his countless photos of the hellscape that is The Tenderloin, his photos of his grandmother, and just his overall discipline in always being with a camera and ready to shoot, are admirable, to say the least,

I share this here not only because Jake is a friend, and not just because I am a big fan of what he does. I share this here because I think that more people need to see what Jake has done and watch what he will continue to do. The ruthless Instagram algorithm is not what keeps his work out of the spotlight, and perhaps the project he has chosen to take on is far too large and (without a doubt) far too deep for a SoMe audience. I just hope that people who see these photos OF Jake, will take the time to look at the photos BY Jake. And I just hope that maybe just one of those people (you?) might have the ability to show his photos to the world.

Thanks, Jake.

Jake Ricker, 38
Photographer
San Francisco, CA, USA
13 December 2024 – 12 December 2025

1 mile = 1.60934 kilometers.

That is the distance from the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to the Marin Headlands.

1.7 miles = 2.737 Kilometers.

That is the total length of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Jake has walked that length thousands of times. Over and over. Every day. For six and a half years. Over 13,000 miles, he tells me. With his cameras

And then one day he just didn’t go back. The plan changed.

I met Jake in Seattle, back before disc brakes and Di2. We would go on rides together before normal people could afford GPS or a power meter. After, I would go to work at my hotel and tell my coworkers where I had ridden, as there was no Strava map to show. It all felt a bit more “real” back then.

I moved to New York on the last day of 2010, and fell out of touch with Jake, and most of the guys I rode bikes with back in Seattle. But according to a long scroll through the DM’s, Jake and I reconnected in 2016. And since around that time, I’ve become a huge fan of what he has dedicated his life to photographing.

When you walk into my apartment in Copenhagen, the first thing you see on the wall is a photo by Jake. It’s a man with his throat slit, sitting in a bus stop, a woman holds his neck to stop the bleeding as three women pass by in the background, and a man sits next to the victim, looking totally unphased by it all.

Very Instagram-unfriendly, and that’s why I love it.

On a table in my living room is a book by Jake called Mad World. My copy is numbered #21 (!!!) and in the back is written “Photos Taken While I Was A Bike Messenger 2009-2018”. Inside are photos of people…all kinds of people doing all kinds of things. If you open one of my drawers, inside you will find a stack of little plastic sleeves filled with his prints and postcards. Everything is the opposite of the photos I take. Everything is the epitome of what a photographer should do.

In 2024 and 2025 I visited Jake twice to take photos of him and his hundreds of rolls of undeveloped photos from the Bridge. He had already finished with his bridge project. Or perhaps “finished” is the wrong word. He had already changed his approach project. Many things led to this decision: A Series of Unfortunate Events.

On 1 January 2024, the Suicide Deterrent Net was completed, and with that, the project ironically died in a way.

Jake has seen people jump and he has talked even more of them out of doing so. He’s befriended the ravens (Jaws & Nikki Sixx) that followed him on his bridge-traverses. He watched the skies of 2020 turn to nearly the same “International Orange” that the bridge is coated in, as the state was devoured by wildfires. He’s documented new graffiti as it appears, and the retaliatory cover-up paint by the civil servants to make it disappear. He’s photographed container ships entering, and mega cruise ships departing the Bay.

My favorite story is from 26 January 2020. DeCarlis “DC” Wilson’s last day alive. I’d love to tell it to you, as it’s totally wild and sad. Instead, I think you should go to @Jake_Ricker on Instagram and scroll back to 5 February and read it for yourself.

At Jake’s desk, I’m shown collages of images of the ravens, container ships, and the images on Google Street View featuring Jake. I’m shown the retaliatory photos he takes of the Google spy-cars. I ask him why he chose the Bridge. He shows the image that started it for him, and then he shows me the images he has collected by others which feature the bridge. He shows me The Pillar, by Stephen Gill.

New York Fashion Week just ended for me, and before I head off to finish out the FW26 season in Milan and Paris, I took the time to write this all down. The photos that Jake creates, (MOST of which are still not even developed, laying in large Ziplock bags in his fridge), are the kind of photos which most photographers should aspire to shoot. The longevity behind his still-ongoing Bridge project, his countless photos of the hellscape that is The Tenderloin, his photos of his grandmother, and just his overall discipline in always being with a camera and ready to shoot, are admirable, to say the least,

I share this here not only because Jake is a friend, and not just because I am a big fan of what he does. I share this here because I think that more people need to see what Jake has done and watch what he will continue to do. The ruthless Instagram algorithm is not what keeps his work out of the spotlight, and perhaps the project he has chosen to take on is far too large and (without a doubt) far too deep for a SoMe audience. I just hope that people who see these photos OF Jake, will take the time to look at the photos BY Jake. And I just hope that maybe just one of those people (you?) might have the ability to show his photos to the world.

Thanks, Jake.