In the Grain Elevator Series the theme of abstraction emerged in my work. At Jamestown
I concentrated on doing abstract studies, but when I was done a sense of time had emerged as an
important theme. Strangely, it was always there in my photography, I just hadn't seen it as a theme.
The steam locomotives are historic artifacts, the grain elevators had a sense of timelessness, but now
I began to see that a patina of age and use did more than add character to the image. It gave a sense
of history.
This project takes this theme even further, the past being divided into model years. As a baby
boomer, I find these vehicles and their styling largely unknown and yet they seem familiar. I can
imagine myself driving them. I can also imagine others driving them in times past, of their styling
being the latest and most fashionable thing, of their being a part of the texture of lives lived not so
very long ago, but now past.
There is a strange way in which a working machine can bring the past back to life. It speaks to us
of past technology and the way it was applied to create a complete solution to a given problem, and
how it became something that we could use, enjoy and in which people took pride. Unlike vintage
clothing or architecture, an historic machine at work is reliving its historic use, it is not being
recycled into an adaptive reuse. But perhaps more importantly, machines, like living things, are self
animating, in there own way they have personalities, turn them on and they come to life. Fire up
an old machine and its past comes to life with it. Look at the image on the left, Dash - 49 Olds' and
imagine yourself settling behind that steering wheel and motoring off into 1949.
The late 30's to the early 60's was a period of great changes in automotive design. Cars evolved
from boxy upright affairs with separate fenders and headlights into the fat, rounded,
aerodynamically styled designs of the forties noteworthy for their sensuously rounded shapes and
heavy chrome trim. These designs gave way to the low squared off but flamboyant styles of the late
fifties and beyond.
Continued Below.
Full Site Menu. (If not shown at left.)
BMW
Buick
Cadillac
Chevrolet
Chrysler
DeSoto
Dodge
Ford
Hupmobile
Hudson
Jaguar
LaSalle
Lincoln
Oldsmobile
Packard
Plymonth
Triumph
Aircraft were used as styling inspirations. The first fins, on a Cadillac, were styled after a WWII
fighter plane, the twin boom Lockheed P-38 Lighting. Rockets and jet aircraft appeared as hood
ornaments. Propeller spinners showed up on grills and bumpers. Large round taillights were faired into
the rear fenders as though they were jet exhausts.
General Motors was the style leader throughout this period and those styles came from its department
of Art and Colour under the direction of Harley Earl. Mr. Earl, as he was known, worked for designs
that were ever lower and longer. He believed that the styling of a car should keep you entertained as you
traveled around it. These philosophies served GM well for many years as they led to ever more opulent
designs. But there eventually came to be a limit to this as cars came to be rolling juke boxes festooned
with chrome. The height (or perhaps low point) of this trend was the 1959 Cadillac. After this car a new
design paradigm was needed. It came from Chrysler with a new sleek and simplified look with lines that
flowed the length of the car. Mr. Earl saw the hand writing on the wall and went into retirement.
There are few of these cars on the road today. Most are in the hands of collectors or rusting away in a
field some place. But in their time, the aircraft and rocket styling, the general flamboyance, spoke of a
time of hopefulness and progress, of a belief in science, technology and the future.
Click here to return to top of page. Click here to contact us via e-mail. Click
here to return to the Home Page. Full Site Menu. (If not shown at left.)