The automobile is, sadly, today often maligned as the Satan of urban sprawl, air pollution and global warming. All that it may be, but motor vehicles have also been the engine of personal expression, adventure and commerce.
Cars are the collective soul of our Sunday drives and summer vacations. They are the long-awaited ticket to independence for generations of teenagers across the land. Without them, there would be no Mother Road, no Blue Highways, no Travels with Charley, no Kerouac. Germany may have invented the automobile, but America gave it heart.
Strangely, for a kid who grew up in New York City and whose family didn't even own a car, they've been a central feature of my life. I devoured car magazines as a child and watched the very few races that made it to television in those days. My first job after college was selling BMWs and Alfa Romeos at a new-car dealership in the Bronx. I was an automotive journalist for a number of years and have had many car companies as clients during my career in corporate communications and multimedia production.
My earliest memories of cars include my Uncle Tom's blue 1958 Plymouth Fury, of the big tailfins. That car took me and my parents to a Florida vacation when it was brand new. He replaced that in 1967 with a deep red Mercury Cougar, and that branded him to my teenage sense of values as my coolest relative. My dad's brother, Uncle Peter, was a Chevy man through and through. He had a '59 Impala followed by a '68, which would be his last car. My cousin Bob had a succession of Volkswagens, starting with a Beetle. There were other nameplates in the family at one time or another: Mercury Comet, Rambler, Lark, an early Toyota, Honda 600. Their engines have all long since gone cold.
To recover those memories and to celebrate the heart and soul of the automobile, I've recently begun a photographic series looking at the art form of the motor vehicle. From the Model T to the Prius, automotive design has reflected popular culture, economic mood swings and world events.
The early days were all about the bling: the beautifully crafted brass hardware, sparkling over-sized headlamps, polished wood steering wheels, elegantly spoked wheels. In the 1930s, streamlining became the rage, showcased in steamships, passenger trains, architecture and consumer products. Cars adopted swooping hoods and trunks along with sumptuous curves around cavernous wheel wells. The influences of Dreyfuss and Loewy were evident.
Vehicles of the 1940s became utilitarian, influenced by the hardships of World War 2. The hardware was more integrated into the body of the vehicle: less pronounced, less bling. But the roaring economic boom of the 1950s let loose the exuberance of style, creating classics such as the '57 Chevy while ultimately leading to the inevitable excesses of tailfins and the unfortunate Edsel.
The 1960s was a decade of upheaval, assassinations and social revolution. In response, cars became the squares of the time: boxy, uninspired, threatened by Ralph Nader and deadly smog. Yet, a bifurcation develops in the market. Cool is defined by Corvette and Porsche. The Camaro and Mustang come onto the scene. The quirky VW Bug becomes the counter-culture car.
The 1970s saw two oil shortages, economic malaise and inroads by small, fuel-efficient import cars. There were great American muscle cars and European roadsters, but they were in some ways a last attempt to stave off the styling doldrums of 1980s cloned Oldsmobiles and boxy Japanese imports. The '80s was just the Ugly Era.
More interesting styling returned in the 1990s as a new economic boom took hold late in the decade, and continued into the 2000s. But if history is any guide, the upcoming era in automobile design will be dominated by functionality and bland styling, driven by economic concerns and environmental correctness.
But for my photography, I'm not interested in the vehicle as a whole. I'm interested in its lines, shape, pattern, color and texture. How the surfaces play with light and dark. How reflections play off the surface. How the details act as focal points. How elements frame features. And what these designs say about their time and place in history.
The first images in what I hope to be a continuing series appear at my online Automobila gallery. Enjoy and remember.