Too Many Wheels | Nicholas Price celebrates 20 years photographing America

20/20: A Retrospective by Nicholas A. Price

This collection is part of the 20/20 Retrospective Collection.
A select number of limited or single edition prints are available directly from the photographer's studio and his art dealer via the purchase link.

An Introduction to Too Many Wheels
The American obsession with the automobile continues, however the designs and flair, the old robust chrome and powerful V8’s seem to have gone forever.
Well not quite, Nicholas A Price a fine art photographer renowned for his stunning black and white film photographs and prints of military hardware, people and places, spent a year out in the desert heat capturing the amazing phenomenon of the dry desert’s potential for preservation.

This time armed not only with his traditional black and white but with the last of his beautiful Kodachrome and Ektachrome film, which allow the true colors to leap from these amazing hand printed photographs.

Although the people moved on, the vehicles stayed behind, a coastal climate would have converted these beauties into colanders in no time, whilst the excessively dry climate of the wilderness seems to have held them in suspended animation.

As a result of this delayed decay, we still get to appreciate the shapes, styles and even original colors of these timeless beauties. Sure they are not going anywhere soon, but anyone with an appreciation of the automobile gets nostalgic, we live in hope of one day restoring what was, hearing the bubbling depths of a big V8, dreaming of trekking along the old Route 66 or what’s left of it, putting the teeth back into road trips, pausing at an overnight motel and returning to a slow and easy jaunt the following day.
The story is in the patina, the thundering sheets of pressed Detroit steel and the waiting eight beneath the hood. Nicholas A Price’s collection TOO MANY WHEELS breathes life into these forsaken but not forgotten souls.

Too Many Wheels
Too many wheels, held in high esteem, for too long a part of everyday life, with coming of age and retirement years, these items of pride and nostalgia, just tin and tires.
Carriages of our age, sitting discarded and how we lack the courage to return them, no longer functional, with shabby paintwork and seats, telling a story or more.
An adolescent fumble or two, those numerous near misses and even greater journeys, how we hold dear these memories, holding on to these old wheels, smells of rotting leather and rusty discoloration.
A view to future restoration and short memories of the truth, these wheeled deities we loved, chrome has been replaced, plastic is dominant, shells of a glorious past.
For soon we are to be replaced with others, which never seem, to be quite as good, as it is the scrap yard for them and the graveyard for us, as we continue to cling on to these, too many wheels