Life is lived in high resolution. But if you get close enough and really put your nose up to it, it all becomes dots. Even the physical world, when examined closely enough, breaks down into particles in motion, dots dissolving into a dance of movement and energy. We resolve the world around us in a continuous unbroken stream of life. Even when we sleep, our brains replay scenes, pulling scraps from our subconscious. For human beings, sight has evolved to be so critical, and so formative, we've evolved to chase sharpness like it holds some kind of truth, that it will make what we're seeing somehow better. But it doesn’t. More pixels don’t make something more real. Getting lost in the minutia of resolution is a myopia all its own. Sometimes, it takes less of it to actually see.
For artist Alan Thornton, the focus on the dots of halftone started, fittingly, with a moment of stillness. “It was only with COVID that everything stopped,” he said. “My head cleared. I felt different.” He found himself standing in front of a massive Andy Warhol retrospective, face-to-face with halftone prints that were raw and vibrant and full of intention. The pattern wasn’t just a byproduct of the medium. It was the medium.
“There’s something mechanical about the process,” Thornton says. “These mechanical things, cars, turned into mechanical images. They have lifelike qualities, but then completely different qualities when you step back. It’s alive in a different way.”
Those dots aren’t a limitation. They’re an invitation. His work chases perfection at the edge of what the medium allows. It walks a fine line between photographic realism and stripped down form, leaving space for interpretation, demanding more from the viewer. Using halftone printing, an old-world technique that builds images from tiny printed points, Thornton reduces each car to its essential visual structure. Originally developed for newspapers and mass media, halftone was designed to simulate full images using limited colors and ink on basic paper. Here, reduction is repurposed for precision. A method born from compromise becomes a tool of exactness. Once used to churn out disposable images, this halftone now slows everything down. The moment you pull back, the illusion either holds or it doesn’t. That tension is the point. Alan's focus lies with the form, proportion, and the way light interacts with each surface, executed through a medium that rewards precision and restraint.
He started with an E-Type Jaguar. Then came the Lotus 72D, the Aston Martin DB5, the Ford GT40, and an Aston Martin Valkyrie. Through a partnership with Amalgam Collection, arguably the finest model makers on the planet, Thornton has worked directly with manufacturers to capture iconic forms in a medium that requires control.
His process is deliberate. He starts with the model, studies the light, and finds the exact angle that reveals what the car actually is, not just what it looks like. “The DB5, for example, doesn’t look the way you think it does,” Alan says. “Once you isolate the form, it shows you things the designer might not have wanted you to see.”
Every shadow, every highlight, every transition of tone gets locked in with intent. The lighting setup is controlled and minimal, tuned to expose form rather than flatter it. At this stage, he’s working more like a sculptor than a photographer, subtracting distractions until only the structure remains. The image is then translated through halftone, where those choices are either confirmed or exposed. If the shot isn’t right from the beginning, it falls apart by the end. Scale adds another layer of challenge, the prints can stretch as large as three by two meters. At that size, every dot becomes a critical decision.
The lower the resolution, the higher the risk. Color choice matters. Composition matters. Design matters. If it isn’t intentional, it falls apart. We all feel it. But most people don’t think about it. We just walk around “seeing”. The human eye itself, for all its complexity, and all its brilliance, tops out around 300 dots per inch at normal viewing distance. Beyond that, you're not gaining clarity, you're just giving TV and phone companies a reason to print a bigger number on the box. It's a resolution arms race driven by packaging specs as meaning and clarity as content. At some point, it’s not about what we can see, it’s about what they can sell. So then, why do we chase more pixels, more sharpness, more "K"? Maybe because we've mistaken fidelity for meaning. Thornton’s work makes a case for the opposite. When resolution drops, intent must rise.
“It’s a process of paring things down,” Thornton said. “Black and white works for a reason. There’s nowhere to hide. Halftone does that too, just in color. If the car is red, that red has to work on its own. There aren’t fifty shades of it to blend in.”
Before all this, Thornton lived in the high-stakes world of commercial photography. Starting at age eleven with a camera in hand and a darkroom of his own by twelve, he later found himself assisting top photographers in London during the era when advertising budgets meant helicopters, biplanes, and deep pocket location shoots. There was no Photoshop safety net. If you didn’t get it right in the moment, you didn’t get it. Those expectations stuck with him. His transition to fine art wasn’t an abandonment of that pressure. Even working with halftone, Thornton is still chasing perfection. But now, it’s about form, not flash.
Lighting plays a central role. When he photographs a car, real or model, he isn’t just trying to make it look good. “Some cars can look astonishing, but with really ugly highlights,” he said. “Sexy and shiny, sure, but not doing much for the form.” He’s focused on drawing out the lines and forms that define the car. The way curves catch light. The proportion and shape of each surface. The elements that define the original design.
Thornton notes that his perception of a car like the Valkyrie, one of the cars he has worked with, is still evolving. Unlike something like the DB5, it hasn’t had decades to accumulate meaning. The observation brings up something else, the idea that cultural saturation isn't the same as depth. A Mustang or E-Type has been layered into film, posters, and racing history. The Valkyrie has been everywhere lately. But that kind of presence isn’t the same as legacy. Maybe it hasn’t earned that yet. Then again, some cars just need time.
Now then, in modern times, we’re just absolutely hammered with pixels. What used to be iconic gets buried in the scroll. “I’d be interested to know whether younger people feel the same as older generations do about cars,” Thornton said. Their impressions are formed not on the walls of childhood bedrooms and images fed through rabbit ears, but through endless digital pixel driven content.
Thornton recalled one moment that stood out most. Someone walked up, looked at the work, and discussed the image with him, what it was doing for them, how it was built, and what it was communicating. They saw what Thornton had put there, without needing to be told. It’s not meant to show you everything. If you see it... you see it.
Check out Alan's work, and be sure to visit his instagram here.
