Milan in August. The city has emptied out, the asphalt stores the heat of the day, and the air stands still between the buildings. Inside Deus Ex Machina, the espresso machine hisses. Giovanni Mariani sits across from me, relaxed, a little tired. The kind of tired that comes from having done exactly what you set out to do.

We had met a few weeks earlier at Wheels and Waves in Biarritz. Among hundreds of custom builds, one bike stopped me in my tracks: a 1999 Kawasaki KX250 wrapped in a raw aluminium body, dark and scratched, as if it had spent decades in a barn. It hadn’t. It was brand new.

A Bike That Refuses to Look New

Giovanni didn’t paint the bike. He treated the aluminium with acid until it turned black, then created different shades by scratching and polishing. No clear coat. The surface keeps changing with every ride.

“The perfect way to sneak a modern bike into a vintage motorcycle event,” he says, grinning.

What fascinated me most was the distance. The bike stayed in Italy, while the body was built by hand in Australia, 16,000 kilometres away: in Sydney with metal artist Cristian Sosa, then on the Gold Coast at Purpose Built Moto. Night after night, with an English wheel and hand tools. At Biarritz, he raced it on the El Rollo flat track, finishing third, second, second, and winning the final round.

The Man Behind the Metal

Giovanni left home at nineteen to travel the world. Today he is an Australian citizen, but Milan is where his family lives. Harley-Davidson in Dijon, then Ducati, then the decision many people only talk about: in 2023 he quit his dealership job and founded GM Motorcycles.

As a photographer, this is what interests me. Not the finished bike, but the person who dares to build it. In the heat of that August afternoon, I saw someone who had found his language. Calm, focused, with hands that tell more than any caption could.

Conclusion: A Surface Still Changing

The aluminium on Giovanni’s KX250 changes with every ride. Every scratch adds to the story. The same is true of Giovanni himself: young, restless, and still in the middle of becoming. Maybe that is what I look for in a portrait: not someone who has arrived, but someone on the way.

Giovanni is heading back to Australia now. Something tells me our paths will cross again. Maybe next June, in Biarritz.