Andrew Bush

Andrew Bush documents the car culture of Southern California and of middle America too: Camaros, Impalas, Trans Ams, Porsches, and VW Beetles, and the drivers who express their personality through the cars they drive. In this strange limbo space, both public and private, Bush captures the inherent mystery of and fascination with other people. The evocative work has been compared to Walker Evans’ classic, equally voyeuristic photographs of New York City subway riders from 1938-1941. Using a medium format camera on a tripod both placed in the passenger’s seat and a strobe light for a flash, Bush’s photos are guerrilla chronicles of people in the midst of driving (and often unaware they are being photographed) down the highway. Bush records the diversity of people and the cars that contain them in a highly narrative, seductive style that suggests film stills: an African American family in a tomato red Cadillac, a tattooed mustached macho man in a yellow Camaro, a Barbie-like woman in a hot pink car. Created from 1989 to 1991, Vector Portraits shows how intimately American self-identification is tied up with the automobile. He renders his drivers with a blend of voyeuristic fascination: quirkiness, comedy and sometimes even despair are all present, depending upon the attitude of the driver. The title for the series comes from the dual meaning of vector, as an agent that contains or carries and the physics concept of the distance between point A and point B. “Cars represent many things,” says Bush “style, fetish, and will always be an index of social status. If I see someone driving a Bugatti Veyron I am curious—I want to see who is driving that million-dollar car.”

Submitted by Yossi Milo Gallery