“Since its invention, the automobile has reshaped our landscape, extended our geographic horizons, and radically altered our conception of space and time. The car has also in influenced the approach and practice of photographers, providing them not only with a new subject but also a new way of exploring the world and a new means of expression.”
The exhibition Autophoto at Fondation Cartier (-September 2017) shows how the car provided photographers with a new subject, new point of view and new way of exploring the world.
Thirty years after the exhibition Hommage a Ferrari, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is once again focusing its attention on the world of cars with the exhibition Autophoto, dedicated to photography’s relationship to the automobile.
Based on an idea by Xavier Barral and Philippe Seclier, Autophoto presents over 500 works from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. It will invite us to discover the many facets of automotive culture – aesthetic, social, environmental, and industrial – through the eyes of photographers from around the world. The exhibition brings together over 90 photographers including both famous and lesser-known gures such as Jacques Henri Lartigue, William Eggleston, Justine Kurland and Jacqueline Hassink, who have shown a fascination for the automobile as a subject or have used it as a tool to take their pictures.
Organized in series, the exhibition is bringing together 500 works made by 100 historic and contemporary artists from around the world including Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Lee Friedlander, Rosangela Renno and Yasuhiro Ishimoto.
Capturing the geometric design of roadways, the reflections in a rearview mirror or our special relationship with this object of desire, these photographers invite us to look at the world of the automobile in a new way. The exhibition also includes other projects such as a series of car models that cast a fresh eye on the history of automobile design, created specifically for the show by French artist Alain Bublex.
AutoPhoto is accompanied by a catalogue including over 700 reproductions, an alternative history of automobile design, essays by scholars working different disciplines and quotes by participating artists.
