Notes:
Gloria Steinem burns a bra every time anyone mentions it, but to most men cars and women go together like Saturday nights and submarine races. And if you don't understand that reference, you might not get Hot Rod Pin-Ups II. It's the follow-up to Perry's 2005 release, where David Perry showcased women in and on cars in garages, junkyards, and even dry lakes.
As sophomoric as this sort of thing sounds, both books are actually quite refined. Whereas most of his contemporaries hire highly idealized professional models, David seems to gravitate to very "normal" women. A few of them are of--ahem--extraordinary proportions, but they're in all shapes, sizes, and, most refreshingly, colors. In fact, a few of his subjects have posed with their own cars.
But it's the way he works his subjects into their respective scenes that bears mention. In his '05 book, David admitted his particular fondness for "Paramount Lighting," a single-source lighting style pioneered in the 1930s and '40s by the movie studio of the same name. It casts a wonderfully flattering light, and it's entirely fitting for a genre pioneered by Gil Evgren, Irving Klaw, and Alberto Vargas, among others. So even though there's no mistaking that these photos are entirely contemporary, the subjects, the dress, the scenes, and the photographic style match.
Don't get us wrong; there's a good deal of cheesecake in these 140 or so pages. It's a pinup book, after all. But it's not gratuitous. No string bikinis here. No ungainly poses. There's lingerie, but seeing how it reflects a more restrained era, it's remarkably modest by today's standards. There are a few examples of exposed flesh, but it's just not exposed to the camera. In fact, if there's any surprise, it's that there's not near as much real estate exposed as you'd think. A number of women are fully clothed, and one wears a parka, proving that suggestion can be just as arousing as skin.
Concerning David's venture into pinup photography, Robert Williams noted in the first Hot Rod Pin-Ups that he's intruded "on sacred ground," but that it's his provenance since David gets the genre. He understands automotive culture. He understands historic photography. He understands beauty, even if it's rough-hewn. But most of all, he knows a great shot.
How to find it:
Motorbooks ISBN: 978-0-7603-3171-2
What it's called:
Art of the Hot Rod
Who done it:Ken Gross with photography by Peter Harholdt; foreword by Alex Xydias
What it's about:A profile of 20 hot rod and custom car builders and the cars they build.
Notes:
By definition every book is a labor not unlike pregnancy. They take forever, they're often painful, and they consume your life. But it's rare that one is as intense a labor as Ken Gross' latest, Art of the Hot Rod.
In a nutshell it's a series of profiles of 20 builders across the United States. Each entry measures between eight and a dozen pages. By way of talking about past and present projects, each builder basically frames his background and philosophy. Straightforward, right?
If only. The first clue that this is a masterpiece is its size. It's a full-fledged coffee-table format. Cracking it open reveals the next clue. The photography backs up any promise that the book's format makes.
For this magnum opus, Ken partnered with Peter Harholdt, a studio photographer with an automotive background. The scope of the project required Peter to shoot more than 100 cars in places often far from ideal light sources, much less studios. So Peter took the studio with him. He converted a 28-foot-long fifth-wheel trailer into a mobile studio. Inside that "studio" is a 10-by-20-foot light bank that mounts parallel to the trailer on purpose-built trusses. A series of screw jacks position it from one side and a background hangs from the other. To nullify the effect of ambient light, Peter has as much as 22,000watt/second at his disposal. It's the equivalent of a full rod shop in a trailer, and he dragged it roughly 13,000 miles.