“PhotoMobiles” is a series of photomontages which provide simultaneous comment upon the automobile and photography industries, as well as our emotional and physical relationships to cars and images. Drawn to auto parts as numinous found objects, I use the Internet, in conjunction with actual salvage yards, as a modern-day car junkyard where i can buy a Hummer gas cap on ebay or surfing the Net for an image of a 70's Pinto engine.

 

In this work the web serves as an agent for sifting through the past, tracing an element of the montages which will then be recycled again into a digital medium for the expression of ephemeral effect.The composition and presentation of the body of work whimsically references botanical prints from the late 1800's. Shown in a 16 x 20 format the prints have a clean, ivory background.

 

Centered at the bottom of each picture, written in a crisp and elegant Edwardian script, is a tag line which adds both lighthearted and formal play to each montage.Like most Americans, I share the cultural sentiment and interest in cars. As an adolescent I collected Matchbox cars and played with demolition derby sets. My passion for wheels and “the road” was spurred on by my father, a long-distance trucker.

My first car, a Nash Metropolitan, and first camera, a Pentax K1000, were both gifts from my dad. This relationship has been central to my work, both in my ongoing car culture series and my 180-page photography book on the trucking industry - "Eighteen: A Look at the Culture That Moves Us"

 

The more accessible photomontage, "Evolution of the Gas Cap", shows a gas cap from a circa 1950's Ford, which looks like a silver door knob. Above it, looms a Hummer gas cap, which resembles a bank vault door. The modern giant dwarfs its predecessor and dramatically illustrates the idea of a dinosaur, the Hummer as T-Rex. The car's dependency on prehistoric oil and the idea of something growing beyond the means of its environmental support offers a sort of scientific display, a possible comparative anatomy illustration from one of Darwin's journals.