Whatever the value of Instagram may be—most pictures of food don’t need to exist let alone be shared—I’m consistently surprised at the reserves of talented photographers yet to be discovered in its crop of millions of profiles. I make this list every week, and over time it’s only natural to expect the pickings to get slim, but they’re seemingly bottomless.
This is inspiring and a little sad, too. Inspiring because it makes me look forward to the next opportunity to point a camera at something cool, but also a reminder that so many great portfolios of amateur and professional work are being missed in this huge mix. Maybe this week’s list can help to slightly rebalance that equation. Some of the people below already have tens of thousands privy to their talents, others only a few hundred. I hope you enjoy all of them regardless.
As stated in his bio, Aimery Dutheil is a French photographer living in London but currently studying in Scotland. Wherever he happens to be, he’s able to get himself in among some pretty special metal and fiberglass. There’s a dose of modern carbon fiber in here too, but it’s a collection of photos mostly consisting of cars that came into being during the 20th century. You’ll see plenty of ‘60s curves and ’80s blocks alike, and all shot in a way that does justice to their respective forms of beauty.
Zach Brehl has an obvious passion for modern supercars, but it doesn’t come at the discrimination of the older generations that led to their being. Indeed, among the contemporary spacecraft from Pagani and the like, you’ll find a dose of the forerunners, like the McLaren M6GT, 288 GTO, 300SL, you know the sort. But back to the modern side; I dislike the fanfare over gaudily-modified Lambos parked in front of Louis Vuitton stores as much as anyone, so do know that you won’t find that crap in here. These shots will bring you right back to the days you wished your bicycle was a car with flip-up doors and a mid-mounted V12.
Guido Herrmann’s profile is the one where you’ll find the above works and many more like them, but they’re created in tandem with Ben Wiesenfarth. Together, the two artists turn crisp studio-quality images of cars—most of them of the vintage sports and racing variety—and layer in other forms and patches of color as well as slices of other photos, creating a kinetic blend full of color and imbued with a sense of motion and urgency that is often lost when translated to two dimensions. It’s a neat way of presenting these iconic machines in a fresh way that still leaves them recognizable.
Poking around Antonin Vincent’s Instagram page, you might come across a Porsche 919 and the rest of the WEC grid battling at Japan’s Fuji Speedway, then follow along with a convoy of Ferrari GTOs through Tuscany before you’re looking at an RX-7 slinking around Tokyo. He has a knack for fitting his photos to the situation rather than applying the same exact style of composition or coloring across the board, and the result is a broad range of content that is linked together through quality rather than the application of filter presets. He doesn’t pigeonhole himself through subjects nor styles, and you feel like you’re looking at the output of a group of photographers, not just one.
Jason Peterson has more than a million people following him, and though that’s antithetical to the idea of the first paragraph, I’m sure there are at least some who haven’t yet seen this wild collection of black and white photography. With contrasts that go deep into noir territory and an array of often surreal urban settings shot every which way, you won’t find many cars unless they’re on a massive gridlocked freeway, but you will get tons of dramatic and unique views on the city of Chicago and beyond. This fifth spot in the weekly roundup will keep staying outside the realm of cars but inside the idea of this weekly list (which is essentially: great photos of things we like to look at). That is unless you want more cars again, in which case, speak up or else enjoy more architecture, travel, landscape, graphic design, etc.
And if you are indeed looking for more Instagrammers to add to your feed, we keep the Petrolicious page stocked with photos captured by our friends around the world, so it’s not a bad place to start looking.
