On August 7, 2025, at Gallery 100, Atlanta native Géoving “Geo” Gérard stood before a packed room giving the artist talk for his first solo exhibition, All the Roads Taken: A Bike Journey Through ITP. The show grew from a simple idea: ride every single street inside Atlanta’s I-285 perimeter.
The conversation offered a window into the miles, images, and ideas that shaped the project
The seed was planted in 2020. During the pandemic, Gerard saw online posts about people biking all the roads in their cities. One in central London. Another in San Francisco. “For me to be an Atlanta native… I thought it would be pretty cool to bike all the roads in Atlanta and make my own Atlanta experience,” he shared.
By 2022, Gerard had committed fully. That year alone, he rode 7,500 miles of the total 13,000 or so he biked. “If there was a year to do this, it needs to be now. I didn’t want this to be another goal where I kick it down the road endlessly,” Gerard told the Gallery 100 crowd of his resolve. “Every day, rain, shine, whatever the elements were, I was out biking just to kind of make this goal possible.”
Capturing a changing city
Gerard’s photographs at Gallery 100 are a mix of fleeting scenes and places in transition. “There’s a photo of North DeKalb Mall down there that no longer exists,” he explained. “There’s a photo of the Zesto’s, which has now been painted black in Buckhead.”
For Gerard, these shifts underscore the role of photography as both document and witness. “… because of a certain person’s situation, I might turn away and not photograph it. And so in my act of turning away, do I dehumanize that individual from what I normally would otherwise photograph?” he said.
The miles of witnessing also brought moments of danger. On the west side of Atlanta, Gerard stopped to photograph a man walking on train tracks. “This guy turns around and points an object that I can’t recognize from a distance, and I hear a couple shots, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god!’” he recounted to the audience. In 2023, the year after Gerard completed his project, a driver making an unprotected left turn hit Gerard, fracturing a bone. “The physical wounds probably heal a little bit better than the mental,” he said, noting the caution he now feels around distracted drivers.
Before the project, Gerard said he gave visitors “the same things that Google would tell you, like, ‘Oh, World of Coke,’ you know, the Varsity.” Now, he knows the city at street level. “Do I know the cut-through paths? Do I know where the fig trees are? Do I know where people like to hide from things? That’s where the local experience came into play.”
Looking ahead
“Usually I don’t try to set out with a set project in mind,” Gerard said. “I might just take photos based on my interest and then over time kind of see what themes emerge and then, all right, we’ll make a project around that and see how it lands.” Among the themes emerging from his archives are urban explorations, with cityscapes photographed atop rooftops and the quiet decay of abandoned spaces.
For now, All the Roads Taken remains his most personal love letter to Atlanta. “I hope that each of you sees some of that reflected in the photos,” he closed. “[That] you think about your own Atlanta experience… the things that we might look over and gloss over daily, but probably are more worthwhile to stop and appreciate.”
All the Roads Taken: A Bike Journey Through ITP (I-285) is on view at Gallery 100 through September 25, 2025.
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