Autopilot: Cars as Cultural Objects by Sami Parkkinen

Autopilot, an ongoing series created by Finnish photographer Sami Parkkinen in collaboration with doctoral researcher Frans Autio, treats cars not as design objects but as evidence, layered with the residue of manufacturing, weather, use and decay.

Sami photographs vehicles at unusually close range, isolating details that are easy to overlook and hard not to misinterpret. Condensation gathers across windows and fuel caps, grime settles into bodywork, scratches interrupt polished paint, and an oil slick spreads across asphalt in iridescent bands of color. Elsewhere, familiar automotive forms become strangely abstract, from a circular hood ornament suspended against a pale background to the crushed interior of a wrecked vehicle, the latter titled Darth Vader for its eerie resemblance to the iconic character’s mask.

The series also questions the sleek, seamless image that cars have long projected. Drawing on ideas explored by Roland Barthes in his 1957 essay “New Citroën,” Autopilot contrasts the automobile’s carefully engineered surfaces with the dirt, soot, moisture and damage they inevitably accumulate. These traces reconnect the car to the physical world around it, revealing an object that is inseparable from the materials, infrastructure and environmental consequences that make automobile culture possible.

For more of Sami Parkkinen’s thought-provoking imagery, visit his website and follow him on Instagram.

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