In Cars

Women racing southwest at 41 mph along 26th Street near the Riviera Country Club, Pacific Palisades, California, at 1:14 p.m. on a Tuesday in February 1997.

More than most girls I know ('cept maybe my sis), I love to get behind the wheel and drive. Starting at age 16 with the unpopulated back roads of North Carolina at my disposal (oh how I miss them), I’d pass right by my neighborhood and drive aimlessly to the tune of one of my beloved mix tapes until I figured someone back home might be getting worried.

Much to the chagrin of all my passengers and/or chauffeurs over the years, my passion for driving has also admittedly translated into afflictions known as “guns blazing f-bomb road rage” and “back seat driving of the worst kind.” My sincerest apologies to all (though I’ve no intention of stopping). It’s horrible, irritating, and sometimes downright embarrassing, but I just cannot help myself. Unless, of course, the driver is my dad, in which case fear of death halts all commentary. Fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

Along with driving, I’m fascinated by watching other drivers as I or they zoom by (usually the former). Am I the only one who imagines how silly we would all look if we could be seen zipping down the road, in seated driving position, but without the actual car surrounding us? Probably so. You know, it's sorta similar to the whole imagining people naked thing to overcome social anxiety… except without any purpose... whatsoever. See what I mean? No? Ok, it’s just weird.

Anyhow, I LOVE this series of photographs by Andrew Bush that I found on Flak. They are so fucking cool they look staged. And the little detail found in each description is darn clever. We actually get their approximate mph! Below is a summary of the entire series, which you can see here:

The culture of cars is an inseparable part of American life. Whether used for functional purposes or recreation, automobiles are expressions of our personality. They also represent the American ideals of freedom, mobility, and independence, providing a unique personal space that is at once private and public. Andrew Bush examines the tension between private and public in his remarkable series of photographs of individuals driving cars in Los Angeles and other parts of the Southwestern United States. By attaching a camera to the passenger side window, Bush made these pictures while driving alongside his subjects — often at speeds exceeding 60 mph. Taking notes on the speed and direction he was going, Bush created extended captions for the images and called the series Vector Portraits. Published this spring by Yale University Press, a portfolio of sixty-six of these images is accompanied by a discussion of the series in the context of Bush’s photography as a whole.