I Love Fast Cars

by Neville Wakefield (Introduction), Craig McDean (Photographer)

Novel fashion photographer Craig McDean-he of the blazing Jil Sander and Calvin Klein campaigns-has a hankering for hot wheels and muscle cars, the kind built in back yards and driveways across America. He also loves to see them drag race, in quasi-formal circuits known as bracket racing. Taking a deliberately studied, off-key approach to the drivers, the machines, and the bonhomie of the small time drag racing circuit-seen in the frozen-moment release of a blue '72 LeMans bursting off the starting line, or in the shit-eating grin of a driver in his fire-orange early model GTO-McDean mimics the terse fluidity and gritty, sensual stasis of his enormously influential fashion work, bringing the full force of his sharp fashion skills to bear on this iconographically American retro pastime. I Love Fast Cars marks a significant departure in the evolution of the over-hyped genre of fashion photography. Expertly sequenced by McDean in collaboration with the Paris-based studio M/M-fashion aesthetics + low culture = rock 'n roll - I Love Fast Cars transforms the laconic Brit's obsession for these lovingly crafted hot rods into a surprisingly seductive homage.

68 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999