I promise that sometime I will stop talking about cars and driving. But not yet.
Recently I had a chance to see a photography exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York. Photographer Lee Friedlander, in his series America by Car, drove around the country for a year in a rental car, taking photos of the landscape as seen through the car window. The idea being that in the United States, this is often the primary way we experience a place. In Friedlander’s photos, you can always tell you’re in the car; you can usually see the side- or rear-view mirror, which reflects a different image than the photo’s main subject, and which also becomes part of the composition.
I like the idea of taking pictures out the car window without hiding the fact. Even though it sounds like you’re taking a bad photo on purpose, it doesn’t necessarily work out that way. Normally, when we travel, we try to maintain the illusion that we’re outside the car, when we’re actually inside the car shooting, say, the herd of buffalo stampeding in our direction. We pull over (usually…), roll the window down, and lean out a little bit. And then there’s the phenomenon of the pull-off vista. Our national obsession with cars is so ingrained that planners know we can just barely be persuaded to leave them in order to see something interesting or beautiful. At scenic pull-asides, we can usually stay in our cars, and in any case walk no more than a few feet and get the shot in less than a minute. Everyone knows that the point is not to hang around absorbing the aesthetics or mood of a place; we want to get the photo and get back on the road. The point is to prove we’ve been there. Grand Canyon? Check. Florida Everglades? Check.
Oh, you thought the point was to look at your photo of swamp grass later on and have fond memories about it? Hahaha!
If we were honest about taking photos only of what we will have fond memories about when we travel, I should have, in this case, taken a photo of my hotel shower. This is one of the best showers I have ever experienced, and I will always remember it. The showerhead was a disk the size of a dinner plate, and the water pressure was generous enough that I had the sensation of being caught in a sudden downpour. I did, however, leave the shower long enough to go to the Whitney.
Last week, I talked a little about what it used to be like to drive around Montgomery County. Given how much time many of us spend in the car, commuting or driving carpools (or both)… and of course looking for parking… I thought, why not try Friedlander’s experiment, but in Bethesda. And so I did. Unlike Friedlander, of course I’m not a tourist or traveler here. Except I behaved like a tourist in that I annoyed the locals by driving too slowly and pulling over suddenly to take pictures.
I don’t have fancy equipment or a remote-control shutter (no one knew Friedlander was in the car most of the time), and I didn’t take hundreds of photos in order to get a few good shots. I used my Blackberry to take the photos (yes, I used a handheld device while in my car…). I drove my usual circuits, stopping until someone honked at me or drove by and blocked my view, or until it seemed like I was about to get a ticket. (Note to publisher: I can expense that, right?)
So, herewith, a random slice of the Bethesda “landscape,” or, as Friedlander might call it, Bethesda by Car.
Note: The Friedlander exhibit runs through November 28 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
