Smoke and Mirrors: Cars, Photography and Dreams of the Open Road

Car photography often evokes the same recycled tropes. Predictably slick, hi-spec images on the front pages of glossy magazines, or huge blow-ups on giant billboards which have one designed aim: to sell a lifestyle. But our relationship to cars is so much more meaningful than these images might suggest.

Like the camera, the car has changed the way we explore the world. With cars came road trips, and with road trips came some of the most important photographic documentaries of our time. A car is a vehicle not just for transport but for our hopes, desires, and even values. In Really Good Car Photography, a selection of world-renowned and up-and-coming photographers come together to pay tribute to the car from the 60s to the present day.

From images of lonely car parks and cars ‘sleeping’ at night under tarpaulins, moody shots from New York City in the 70s to witty close-ups of badly-repaired cars and painterly landscapes shot through wet windscreens, these photographs display cars at their most playful, introspective and meaningful, reminding us that there is more to them than just metal and machinery – for cars are emotionally intertwined with the lives we live.

Moving away from the one-dimensional imagery that has become synonymous with car photography and offering a selection of penetrating, unusual and poignant pictures in return, Really Good Car Photography is an utterly iconoclastic look at cars that reinvents what is possible for the genre.