It took quite a dose of daring for a 17-year-old girl to cycle alone across the United States in 1939. Clearly, Ruth Orkin was no slouch when she set off on this solitary adventure of almost four months, from Los Angeles to New York, with her bicycle, her camera and $25 in her pocket.

The exhibition "Ruth Orkin, Bike Trip, USA, 1939," presented at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris and accompanied by a book published by Textuel, revisits this unique journey in about 40 prints. The trip also marked the first series of images by the budding photographer – Orkin would later work for magazines and make films with her husband, Morris Engel.

For the young woman, this journey was both a quest for emancipation and a feminist affirmation. One of her most vivid childhood memories is of an acrobatic flight demonstration by her idol, Amelia Earhart, the first woman pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Inventive and resourceful, the young Orkin managed to raise the small amount of money needed for her project by winning a prize in a competition for young designers organized by a women's magazine. The challenge was to come up with a new pattern for a fabric, and she had the idea of drawing stylized bicycles, elegantly intertwined and seen from above. Her design was even used to create a dress prototype.

'Hercules,' the inseparable companion

The teenager treasured her bike, nicknamed "Hercules," an inseparable companion and symbol of her independence. In doing so, she followed in the footsteps of women who, since the 19^th century, had used the bicycle as a means of achieving autonomy and reclaiming public space. In 1896, the American women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony claimed that the bicycle had "done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."

To travel from west to east across the US, Orkin took the train, the bus or hitchhiked to the big cities, using her two-wheeler to get around on arrival – in June, she still managed to cover 180 kilometers in one day between Philadelphia and New York. At night, she relied on the network of youth hostels, which began popping up in the country in 1934.

She quickly realized the importance of publicizing her journey. She contacted journalists in the towns where she stopped. They were all intrigued by her unique story. The resulting articles earned her invitations to trade fairs, free panniers for her bike and even a new bike. For each article, the young woman carefully staged herself – wearing a dress for the photo, for example.

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