Beautiful, destructive, dramatic. Picturing the car.

Photographers capture images of cars at work, rest and play

Car photography is usually glossy, superficial and designed to sell a lifestyle. But it can also be artistic, as can be seen in a new book, Smoke & Mirrors: Cars, Photography and Dreams of the Open Road. Adam Hay-Nicholls, a writer specialising in motoring, culture and travel, has compiled a selection of work by photographers who capture cars in often playful, and sometimes, thought-provoking ways.

Hay-Nicholls writes: “Cars transport us not just physically, but emotionally. Photography transports us, too, either through visual manipulation or simply by taking us around the world. The modern camera and mass-produced cars were both born of the early twentieth century, giving us new perceptions of space and time.”

The book explores themes of freedom, speed, self-expression, futurism and silence. There are dramatic photosets of desert racers, the choreography Formula One races, the austere technology of automated factories, toylike futurism of concept cars and startling mutant vehicles created for the USA’s Burning Man festival. There are darker moments, such as pick-up trucks converted into weapons of war by Libyan fighters, and autopsy-like records of crashed cars.

However, in some sets, it is the drivers and passengers who become the focus. Dougie Wallace’s frenetic, paparazzi-styled ‘Harrodsburg’ shows the super-rich at the wheel in London W1, many of whom seem uncomfortable with being caught on camera. By way of contrast, stillness is the overriding feeling evoked by Martin Usborne’s canine portraits in ‘The Silence of Dogs in Cars’.

Several of the photo essays explore the car as a parked artefact, with some drawing connection between parking and sleep. This is literally the case in William Green’s shots of Tokyo taxi drivers sleeping in their cars between shifts. It is the cars themselves that are at rest. Tom Blachford’s ‘Midnight Modern’ series are nocturnal portrait’s of classic American automobiles parked in front of beautiful Palm Springs villas. Gerd Ludwig’s ‘Sleeping Cars’ goes one step further, focussing on cars shrouded in dust covers. And Peter Lippman’s ‘Paradise Parking’ is a record of abandoned, rusting vintage cars reclaimed by nature in barns and fields across France.

In marked contrast, car parks are shown to be spaces that are as dynamic as race tracks in ‘Donuts’ by Nick Turpin, whose eye was caught by arcs of burnt tyre rubber on the asphalt at a Sainsbury’s supermarket in Beckenham, south London.

The physical act of creating donuts is captured in the photoset that graces the book’s cover, ‘Burnout’ by Simon Davidson. This captures the drivers of Australian muscle cars shredding their tyres, creating colourful plumes of smoke.

Beautiful, destructive and dramatic. That seems to sum up the car.

Smoke & Mirrors: Cars, Photography and Dreams of the Open Road is published by Hoxton Mini-Press