Untitled c. 1911

Spooner & Wells made this photograph, a monochromatic study of a car, sometime in the early 20th century. I love how a simple photographic gesture can speak to the aesthetics of the machine age. Looking at this image, I think about the artist aiming to capture something essential, perhaps the promise of forward movement, the allure of the new. What does it mean to fix this object in time? I think about all the photographs taken since then, and how artists continue to look at the world through a lens, trying to distill an essence, a truth. The car's form, captured in shades of grey, is not just a representation but an idea, a feeling about progress, about modernity itself. Spooner & Wells were part of a conversation about what photography could do, what it could reveal about our relationship to objects and to the future.