The Slow Eye: Kyle and the Lives Long Ridden

IMAGES: Sam McKenna

TEXT: Kyle with Pedaled

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IMAGES: Sam McKenna

TEXT: Kyle with Pedaled

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Kyle Kivijärvi has spent a decade photographing people most of us walk straight past. Not because they're hard to find—they're everywhere, on every street corner, in every park—but because almost nobody stops to look. YAMA: Human Trails is a series about the people behind the ride, and what shapes the way they move through the world. For Kyle, founder of Gramparents, the answer has always come from the same place: a bike, a camera, and the habit of never being in quite as much of a hurry as everyone else.

Based between Colorado and New York, Kyle spends his days looking for stories most people ride past—in the people he photographs, and in the roads and trails he rides. This is his trail.

How did you get to know the bicycle? Was it always with you, or something you found later in life?

"It was something I've loved since I was a kid, honestly. When I was young, living in the Bay Area, all the neighborhood kids had bikes and I didn't. My parents didn't have a lot of money for fancy things, so they got me a used kid's bike from a thrift store—an old Schwinn. The tire didn't even have an inner tube, just a solid piece of rubber. I rode that bike for years, until the wheels broke from being too dry.

After that I got a BMX from a garage sale. Then in junior high and high school I left the bike for a while and got into team sports. It wasn't until after high school, in the early 2000s, that I got another bike—a road bike converted into a single speed, right when that whole track bike scene was starting to get trendy. My younger brother was really into BMX, and we didn't have a lot in common growing up, but riding bikes together became our common ground.

Since then, it's always been a mode of adventure and discovery for me, more than transportation or competition. I never got into racing."

For Kyle, the bike was never about the finish line. It was about what you notice on the way there.

Gramparents started almost by accident. What's the story behind it?

"When I moved to New York in the early 2010s I worked directly in fashion—stores in Soho, brand management, fashion weeks in Paris and New York. I'd always had an eye for the way people dressed and carried themselves. But I was never really into the trendy stuff my own generation was wearing. I just liked how older people carried themselves—they weren't trying to be stylish, they were just going about their day, sweeping the street or reading a newspaper.

I also had a real connection to them. I'd worked a few jobs in retirement homes, and I loved talking to them—they have a lot of cool stories from a different time. I've always been drawn to old, classic things in general, not just fashion. Old cars, old jazz, classical music—it's all part of the same aesthetic to me.

I started posting photos on my personal Instagram, and it became a running series people liked. Eventually I gave it its own page so it wouldn't take over my whole feed, and that's when Gramparents officially started, in 2016."

Ten years later, the account he never meant to build has become the thing people know him for.

After a decade, what keeps it alive for you?

"In the beginning it was all my own photos, taken on my phone. As the following grew—20,000, 50,000, 100,000—people started submitting their own photos, tagging me in their stories. Now a lot of the content comes from other people, which is great, but I want to get back to creating more of it myself.

I've been doing more video lately, face-to-face interviews, reels. I like diving into who these people actually are—what they do, how long they've been doing it. I recently met a guy in Maine who's been running a Volvo repair shop by himself, with his dog, for fifty years. I just walked past and started talking to him. It's less about fashion now and more about a lifestyle—the clothes, sure, but also the room they're sitting in, the art on the wall, the music playing. That's the story I want to keep telling."

Do you think younger generations could learn something from slowing down and listening to people who've lived through a different pace of life?

"For sure. Everything moves so fast now, digitally and visually—even this interview is content for the internet. There's a whole quiet trend of people trying to unplug, going back to wired headphones, dumb phones. You read something on your phone and save it for later, and you never look at it again. But you'll remember a conversation with someone. You'll build a real connection that barely exists anymore.

There was a man I photographed once, reading a newspaper on a hot day. I said something to him, I don't even remember what, and we ended up talking for forty minutes. I hadn't planned on it—we still had a shoot to finish—but he was talking, and I didn't want to be rude. You both walk away from that with something that didn't come out of a phone."

Some of the best stories, Kyle says, don't come looking for you. You have to be paying attention when they show up.

Do you see the world the same way when you're riding and when you're out shooting for Gramparents, or do you keep the two separate?

"No, I think it's all the same, honestly. Whenever I leave the house—on foot, on the bike, in the car—my eyes are always scanning for something. Nature, mountains, a person, a scene. If I'm not in a hurry, I'll turn around to go look at something. I'll tell whoever I'm riding with, go ahead, I'll catch up—I saw something I need to check out.

There's an old man who drives a white Saab up on the mountain near where I ride. I've never met him, never caught a photo, but I keep seeing his car around town. One of these days I'll catch him. I keep those mental notes going. It's all just one overall sense of exploration, being ready for whatever's around the corner."

Where do you feel most yourself on a bike?

"I'm not really a big group-ride person—I prefer being in the woods, away from cars, mostly on gravel. If I have to ride in a city, I will, but it's not really where I get the most out of it. If I had to choose, the mountains of Colorado are my favorite, along with parts of Northern California—Marin County, up by the Redwoods, quiet roads. I haven't ridden in Europe yet, but I've seen videos of people riding the Dolomites, and I'd love to try that someday."

What has cycling—or being outside in general—taught you about life?

"I think being outdoors and connected to nature, wherever you live, gives you something you can't really get another way. If I'm not outside, there's no such thing as Gramparents. If I'm not outside, I'm not riding a bike.

The outside is what moves my life. And in some way, shape or form, it'll move yours too—you just have to find it."

Kyle never set out to build any of this. He just kept looking a little longer than everyone else.

Some stories are still out there, parked on a quiet street, waiting to be noticed.