Then, well, everything else happened.
The pandemic rolled in, and with it changed not just everyday life but also what you were allowed to talk about publicly without being immediately pigeonholed. Cars suddenly became rolling climate sins. Streets turned red, bike lanes conquered the city, and the old white man (a category I presumably fall into the moment I get excited about sports cars) became a caricature. I shelved the project. Not out of conviction, more out of caution. A coffee table book needs attention, reviews, interviews, and I had little desire to justify my enthusiasm for sheet metal.
That was six years ago now. And the folder is making itself heard again.
It's remarkable how ideas work. You can ignore them, push them aside, bury them under other projects, but they don't disappear. They wait. And at some point, while leafing through old research or catching sight of an Alfa Spider at a traffic light, they knock again. Intrusively polite, like a guest who knows they're actually welcome.
The question on my mind is this: Should I abandon a project because it doesn't fit the zeitgeist? Because marketing it could be difficult and the result would be a niche product that doesn't quite belong anywhere between automobilia and nude photography? Or is that perhaps exactly the appeal?
I've learned from my work so far that the best images often emerge where you're not swimming with the crowd. And I wonder whether all this worry about the zeitgeist isn't really a form of preemptive obedience. A self-censorship that nobody demanded, except myself.
Then again, honestly, I'm not sure. The challenge would be enormous. Nudes and automobiles: it's a subject that tips into cliché in a heartbeat. The images already exist a thousand times over, from pin-up illustrations to car tuning shows. The question would be whether I can find something of my own, something that goes beyond the obvious. On the other hand, hasn't that been the case with every one of my projects?
There's something about these old vehicles that fascinates me, beyond any nostalgia. These cars had faces. You could tell a Citroën DS from a Ford Capri without seeing the badge. Today, one SUV looks like the next, as though the designers were afraid of anything that might ruffle feathers.
Pairing them with women doesn't sound like provocation to me. It sounds like an aesthetic tradition older than any debate about it. Beauty and machine, skin and lacquer, the organic beside the engineered. Maybe that's old-fashioned. But maybe it's simply timeless.
I know I have to make this decision on my own. But sometimes it helps to think out loud. So let me ask you: Do you still remember these cars? Those coupés and sedans that looked as though someone had worked with passion rather than a wind tunnel? Does the idea appeal to you, or are you shaking your head at the man who, in 2026, is still thinking about something like this?