Yorgo Tloupas authors an introductory essay for Matteo Ferrari’s photography book Automotive Monogamy, exploring the visceral relationship between human beings and automobiles, symbols of status, freedom, and, today, of decline. At the heart of the book, a series of diptychs in which vintage car owners are photographed alongside their vehicles decades after the original image was taken: a photo-sociological project on the passage of time, and on the silent loyalty to the objects that outlast us.
Cars have changed the world. Distances have shrunk, cities have become grids, the idyllic Italian coastlines have been replaced by a succession of bridges and tunnels, fortunes have been made — from Henry Ford to Elon Musk — and fortunes have been lost — by lottery winners who squandered their sudden wealth on Lamborghinis destined to end up wrecked, and humanity has found a new way to die, trapped inside carcasses of twisted metal.
Our fatal dependence on oil and the countries lucky enough to have it buried beneath their soil stems partly from plastic production, but mainly from our insatiable thirst for petrol to fuel the new species that populates the earth: the automobile.
As Arthur C. Clarke speculated in his 1962 essay Profiles of the Future: “An observer from another planet might well believe that the true inhabitants of Earth are a species of motor vehicle, and that human beings are a kind of parasite that infests them.”
In the brief time since cars entered our lives, our relationship with them has evolved. From embodiments of progress and personal freedom, they have become central to the problem of the Anthropocene and symbols of our rapid decline. They are now glaring proof of the wrong turn we took at some point over the past few centuries.
Cars are the sole reason why megalopolises are gridlocked and choking on petrol fumes, why enormous piles of used tyres scar the landscape, and why sprawling car dealerships line the arterial roads leading into most cities on earth, displaying their metal machines ready to be chosen.
Suggested articles
Status
Roland Barthes described cars as les cathédrales des temps modernes (the cathedrals of modern times), and their sacred status reached its peak at the end of the twentieth century, the period in which most of the vehicles featured in this book were built.
The democratisation of the car, which began in the 1950s, turned what was once a rare and unattainable commodity reserved for the economic elite into something that most people could aspire to own.
Yet even if cars have become somewhat accessible, they remain to this day the most expensive object that the majority of the world’s population will ever purchase. The working and middle classes save and borrow money not to buy works of art or rare luxury watches, but to park a four-wheeled metal box beneath their rented apartment building.
Cars have always been the most powerful and visible status symbol of the modern world. Mobutu Sese Seko parading through Kinshasa in his Cadillac Brougham limousine, Dr. Dre cruising through Compton in his 1963 Chevrolet Impala Lowrider, or young couples fantasising about the trendy Vanlife lifestyle, parking their 1986 Volkswagen Caravelle prominently above a remote surf spot in Nicaragua, all reveal a similar desire to satisfy a deep human need: to be recognised and admired.
Jean Baudrillard, in Le système des objets, argued that the car expresses not its engine but its «shape, colour, silhouette and social position: a language of status written in steel.»
Libri consigliati
Automotive Monogamy
When Matteo Ferrari approached us in 2001 with his project, it was immediately clear that it was not only perfect for our magazine, Intersection, but that it also represented a kind of justification for the very existence of our publication. Together with Dan Ross, we had launched it as an antidote to mainstream car magazines, as a way of exploring the connections between mobility and culture, investigating all the ways in which cars move us.
We interviewed architects, actors, musicians and artists, always through the lens of their relationship with cars, motorcycles and boats; we commissioned reportages from around the world on all the ways in which cars impact society, and we focused on aesthetics rather than performance.
The existence of this artistic project was proof that we had been right to launch the magazine. Matteo’s idea was simple, yet extraordinarily difficult to execute: he wanted to photograph vintage car owners alongside their vehicles, faithfully recreating the first portrait they had taken with their newly purchased car decades earlier.
Over the years we published numerous series of Matteo Ferrari’s images in Intersection, always frustrated by the inherent limitation of magazines: the restricted number of pages allocated to each feature.
The Test of Time
This book brings together all the subjects we published alongside new ones, highlighting the potentially endless nature of this photo-sociological work. Like many long-term artistic projects, Automotive Monogamy has a value that goes beyond its final output. The thought and construction behind the emotionally charged juxtaposition is what makes this book a unique and crucially important achievement.
Beyond their status as material heritage, these cars seem to have become part of the families to which they belong. Ageing better than human beings, outlasting short-lived pets, one can sense the emotional support role they have acquired over the decades spent alongside their owners.
The cars in this book are sometimes very ordinary, and in some of the diptychs it is clear they have been kept out of necessity. In others, it is evident they have been lovingly restored and preserved for their obvious value, remaining intact while their owners have lost some of their youthful beauty. Gippo Salvetti still appears elegant in 2005, but his slender silhouette in a brilliant white three-piece suit has not stood the test of time as well as his Alfa Romeo Giulia SS (Gianfilippo Salvetti, 1972–2005).
Portraits of man and machine form the core of the project, for obvious social reasons, but the other compositions are often the most emotionally charged: a once-young Italian couple and their Fiat 500 still together thirty-one years later (Mr. and Mrs. Marzoli, 1977–2008), a father and a grown son alongside their Renault 5, which serves as a measure of time (Agustín & Leandro Cappuccio, 1994–2009), and a small family still gathered around their Renault 4, minus a few childhood toys (the Santambrogio family, 1978–2005).
The mystery and unexplained episodes in the decades separating the images make each diptych all the more meaningful. What happened to Pablo Adrián Torres between 1990 and 2010 remains unknown; all we know is that one element of his life stayed constant: his 1971 Renault 12 (Pablo Adrián Torres, 1990–2010).
This book also underscores the universality of the automobile. More than architecture, human physical features, landscape specificities or clothing, a BMW looks the same from South America to Europe. The only clues to geographical origin come from the number plates, when visible.
The future of the archive
There is still much to be done to complete this archive. Matteo Ferrari could carry out the same research across the world, finding Japanese owners of unremarkable Citroën AXs, Icelandic farmers loyal to their lifted Toyota Land Cruisers, and Moroccan grandfathers proud of their Peugeot 404s.
In a paradoxical twist, this long-term photographic project carries a sense of urgency. The owners must be photographed before they disappear, and the cars must be kept in running condition in order to be recorded. In a world where objects are manufactured with planned obsolescence, will this idea be replicable in the decades to come?
A proud new owner of a Chinese BYD Dolphin Surf electric car could potentially take a photograph of himself in front of the vehicle at the dealership, but will he still own it twenty or thirty years from now? Will the passing years turn what is today an unremarkable vehicle into a collectible and desirable object? Only time will tell, but this vast exercise can be perpetuated with the same rigour. Matteo is already working on it.
Yorgo Tloupas is a French graphic designer and creative director born in Paris in 1974, of Greek and Italian heritage. Specialising in logos and visual identity, he has worked with brands including Hermès, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Omega and Diptyque. In 2011 he founded the studio Yorgo&Co in Paris. He has served as art director of Vanity Fair France, GQ France and Les Inrockuptibles, and is co-founder of the ski brand blackcrows. He teaches design at some of Europe’s leading schools, including Sciences Po Paris and ECAL in Lausanne.