Car Crash Studies

  1. copyright — Nicolai Howalt
  2. year — 2009
  3. edition — Edition of 5 + 2 AP
  4. size — Various sizes
  5. material — C-print on aluminium

In between confrontation and silent contemplations, Car Crash Studies is a photographic study of cars that have been involved in severe and fatal accidents.

While the car crash studies are typographical, and in some instances close to sterile accident report photographs, the series move between documentation and abstraction, confronting the viewer with the human fear of trauma and death.

Several of the images are vividly abstract and look more like landscapes than slashed up metal. Collided bodyworks, dents and cracks in varnish appear as highly enlarged details in the monumental works. These ‘color plains’ become the ultimate instance of beauty created from suffering, pain and destruction.