january 15, 2022
whenever I used to get depressed in Reno (frequently, because I lived in Reno), I'd go for photo walks, and that's when I started fixating on eighties and nineties cars as expressive elements for a scene. They're everywhere there because the city is still in the middle of gentrifying itself clean of the past and removing anything that feels Poor, and in the meantime, normal people driving 25 year old cars try to continue surviving.
I still am flip-flopping on what eras of cars I will actually include in this exhibition, but as I look at the Pilot photo (posted yesterday, titled dichotomies), I realize no matter how well or artistically I shoot most modern cars, they lack the impact I want.
It could just be that not enough time has passed for them to have the same aura as even the most basic of 90s cars - like this Ford Escort wagon, a vehicle I personally know to be a dreadful pile of shit - but I think it's something deeper. there's an end of history vibe to these cars; they represent the last bastion of when 1) people could afford things and 2) everything wasn't a war-ready, 00s Global War on Terror-capable SUV. The possibilities of the world feel like they collapsed with 9/11, the car world included.
From an automotive perspective, minivans and cheap sports cars died instantly. All that was left were SUVs and shitbox economy cars and toys for the wealthy, and we never recovered. Everything from that moment feels like it was doomed to get shittier forever. The panopticon would strengthen, corporations would own more of your life, etc, and it's hard to imagine that stranglehold ever loosening its grip even today, no matter how hopefully Communist I try to be.
So while modern cars must exist in the modern world, old ones allow your mind to roam, especially when the architecture is vague. what if that's the 90s. what if that's a better world, or at least one more interestingly broken than the one we inhabit. I think I may not allow anything newer than '99 or so in this exhibit, just because I wonder - what about a world where the car faded into irrelevance, a world where an Escort in an alleyway was something strange, lurid?
