Having been relieved of one or more parts, they rest still locked to poles, fences, and racks, their owners too disheartened or disgusted to even bother removing them or buying a replacement wheel, an extra saddle. As if to say, I cannot bear to look at you. You cannot be made whole again.

Saddest of all are the solitary wheels, those tiny monuments to the bike that was, the ghost of a frame dancing delicately around them. They speak to a hope betrayed, a single, unthinking moment that ended in loss and bitterness and chaos.

So all over London the lost bikes sit, dreaming of woodland paths and café-lined streets, of tweed and leather and the dancing of pedals.

Lost Bikes