“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” — John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)
There is a particular hour in Pebble Beach that I remember fondly.
It is the hour before everyone arrives.
Before the polished shoes, the cameras, the auction paddles, the conversations about provenance and value. Before the lawns fill with people who have traveled thousands of miles to admire machines that have traveled much farther through time.
For a brief moment, the cars seem to belong to themselves.
I had the good fortune of living in Pebble Beach for twenty years, and during Car Week I sometimes had the privilege of seeing these extraordinary automobiles before the crowds descended upon them and the fog lifted. I would walk among them while the morning was still relatively quiet, and I began to realize that I wasn't really looking at cars.
I was looking at ghosts.
The first ghost wears white.
The old Gentleman, Pebble Beach, CA, 2008
The 1928 Mercedes-Benz S Tourer has the presence of someone who has never once doubted the importance of an entrance. Its great headlights stare forward with almost comic seriousness, while the grille rises between them like the face of an old aristocrat who has been waiting patiently for the world to catch up.
I love that about old automobiles. They have personalities.
Modern cars are often designed to disappear into the flow. These machines seem to demand that life stop for a moment and look at them.
But beneath the elegance, I sense something else: Endurance.
The Mercedes has survived its original moment. Whatever roads it traveled, whoever sat behind its wheel, whatever conversations took place inside it, have disappeared. The machine remains.
Perhaps that is why I am drawn to it.
I have always been fascinated by the way time leaves fragments behind. A photograph does something similar. It takes a moment that should have vanished and gives it an improbable second life. My work has often been concerned with memory, transformation, and the uncertain territory between what happened and what we remember happening.
Then there is the Buick.
The Car I Almost Remember, Pebble Beach, CA, 2009
The 1938 Century Coupe feels entirely different. It appears suspended behind a veil, almost as if I have encountered it through the imperfect glass of memory.
I don't see a car so much as I see an Absence.
Perhaps someone once drove it toward a destination they never reached. Perhaps a young couple sat inside it, believing that their lives stretched endlessly ahead of them. Perhaps someone leaned against its door one evening and made a decision that changed everything.
I don't know.
My images have always been invitations rather than instructions. I don't want to tell the viewer exactly what happened. I want to leave the door open just wide enough for another person's memories to enter.
The Buick became that kind of doorway for me.
And then, naturally, there is the Jaguar.
Red Desire, Point Lobos, Carmel, CA, 2008
Red.
Not merely red, but Red.
The 1955 Jaguar Roadster doesn't seem particularly interested in memory. It has arrived to remind us that beauty can be shameless.
Its face is almost theatrical. The long body, the sweeping curves, the bright red surface, and the dark surroundings make it seem more like a creature than a machine. If the Mercedes is dignity and the Buick is remembrance, the Jaguar is desire.
It is the troublemaker in the family portrait.
And perhaps that is why these three images belong together.
They are portraits of three ways we experience the past.
The Mercedes remembers.
The Buick dreams.
The Jaguar refuses to behave.
That is what I love about looking at old things.
We often imagine that we are looking backward when, in fact, we are looking inward.
A vintage automobile can become a mirror. We see craftsmanship, history, and design, but we also see our own relationship with time. We wonder who owned it. Where did it go? What did the world look like when it was new? What happened to the people who believed that its future was still ahead of them?
And then comes the slightly uncomfortable realization that we are asking those questions because we know the same thing about ourselves.
Everything beautiful eventually becomes history.
Perhaps this is why I photographed these cars the way I did. I wasn't interested in simply recording what was standing in front of me. My artistic instinct has always been to build images that hover between reality and interpretation, allowing fragments of memory, imagination and atmosphere to become part of the story.
There is something wonderfully appropriate about that during Monterey Car Week.
For ten days, Monterey County becomes a theater of automotive memory. Cars that once represented speed, luxury, innovation or aspiration return to the stage. The 2026 celebration culminates on August 16 with the 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, where some of the world's most significant collector automobiles gather on the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
But I sometimes prefer the moment before the curtain rises.
The quiet.
The space around the cars.
The feeling that, for a few minutes, they are not exhibits at all. They are simply old travelers waiting patiently for someone to remember them.
That is perhaps what these photographs are really about.
Not cars.
Not even Pebble Beach.
Time.
And the strange human desire to rescue beautiful things from disappearance.
John Berger once wrote, “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”
I think about that often.
Because when I look at these three automobiles today, I no longer see exactly what I saw in 2008 and 2009.
I see what time has done to my own memory.
And perhaps that is the real journey these cars have taken.
They were once machines built to move through the world.
Artist Statement
I have always been drawn to objects that carry the weight of time.
These automobiles became more than machines to me. They became fragments of memory, characters from stories whose beginnings and endings I could only imagine. I photographed them not simply to preserve their appearance, but to explore the strange space between what an object is and what it makes us remember.
For me, a photograph is never finished. It becomes an invitation, allowing the viewer to bring their own memories into the frame and continue the story.
Now they move through my imagination.
And, if I have done my job well, they may move through yours too.