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print this pageGearshifts and Whitewalls: Automobiles in Histories of Photography
Andrew Hershberger
Saturday, October 11 - 11:20AM to 11:55AM
Wayne State University
The Ford Model T began rolling off the assembly line at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit in 1908. Certainly by that time and long after that time, photographers all over the world have been fascinated by cars. This presentation has been designed specifically for the Detroit MWSPE conference, and it will explore a variety of photographers who have photographed automobiles. I will focus particularly on performing close visual analyses of photographs of automobiles that have been included in various histories of photography. For example, my presentation will begin in 1913, with the then 19-year-old French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1988). I will examine Lartigue's utterly bizarre and seemingly distorted gelatin silver print entitled Car Trip, Papa at 80 kilometers an hour. I will show how the bizarre qualities of this photograph can be understood partly as the result of Lartigue's specific camera and its specific type of shutter.
speaker
Andrew Hershberger
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