Photographer Simon Davidson spent 14 years photographing Australian hot rods, their unique culture, and the people around them. Via CNN:
Davidson, a car-loving Australian who spent many years in the U.S., originally honed his photographic skills on years of fashion and music shoots in Los Angeles. When he returned home, he says he was looking for something that would help him build his own artistic style outside of his corporate work.
“One thing I did learn from all the top photographers that I was working with and who I admired out in the field was that they had these strong bodies of work and personal work that told a little story about themselves,” says Davidson.
Although a sharp contrast to the carefully manicured world of fashion, a trip to watch off-street drag racing one night with a friend proved the spark he needed and left him intrigued by the beauty of the cars and the “really blind passion’ of the people who build and race them.
“I looked around at the cars and loved them but it was the people that got me,” he says. “I’d never seen so many weird and wonderful people.”
That chance drag-race lead to a long career photographing cars, both in Australia and the U.S., for commercial and editorial commissions, but Davidson says it’s his personal work capturing Australia’s car culture that has allowed him to grow and define his body of work as a photographer.