Car Classic reliably serves up a feast for the photographic eye, with its high-contrast placement of man-made wonders amid the natural marvels surrounding Art Center’s Hillside campus. But the 2014 edition of the College’s annual homage to car design delivered more spectacularly photogenic feats of design and engineering than usual, thanks to this year’s theme, Street to Screen, featuring a swarm of Batmobiles amid a caravan of camera-friendly automotive stars of film and TV.
To give these sirens of street and screen their artful due, we dispatched two upper term Photography students, Kit Sinclair and Eduardo Medrano, to capture the look and feel of this year’s event with a visual conversation in the language of still images. Their marching orders were simply to convey the visceral thrill of Art Center’s carefully curated collection of iconic rides.
Kit and Eduardo delivered on their promise and then some, with the above series of images, a digital zine, for which Sinclair supplied the following inquisitive artist’s statement, clearly aimed at engaging the viewer: “This series was influenced by timeless design and created to inspire you, no matter your background. What makes a design classic? What elements in a design make it appealing no matter when you see it? How does time influence and inform current design?”
An interesting question not asked is when does a design go from a classic to historic or sometimes just old. I rarely here people refer to a Model-T as “classic” they will usually opt for the word “antique”. These are definitely terms of art. What qualities make something qualify for one or the other?
Although the quality of the pictures are undeniably exquisite, it would be nice to know what car is being photographed. OR, if in the case the Photog. is showcasing a certain feature of a car for it’s significance, it would be nice to see some sort of a reference as to why the part(s) is being photographed, again with a reference to the car itself. That is only a humble opinion of course, nothing more.
GREAT PIX thought, keep up the fantastic work!