ROAD PIRATES, <i> photographs by Marc Hauser with text by Judy Robb (Chicago Review Press: $24.95).</i>

Motorcycle subculture gets loving treatment here in photographs and accompanying insider descriptions of the brotherhood. Birdman, above, is identified as a tattoo artist and certified pastry chef. Fans of Danny Lyon’s famous biker photos may be disappointed in “Road Pirates”; the salient quality of these pictures is theatricality rather than documentary realism. Many of Hauser’s photographs have an oil-painting quality, and these toughs posing on their beloved Harleys incongruously recall 17th-Century portraits of wealthy Dutch gentlemen similarly satisfied with their possessions.