Car Girls Portfolio

"One thing I found interesting is the body language of the car girls: they always touch the car. There is always a moment that they touch the surface of the car. The male viewer might think: 'If I possess that car, I can possess the girl.' This act of touching is very sensual and seductive. The car symbolizes the male and the hand of the girl, the female."
—Jacqueline Hassink

Dutch artist Jacqueline Hassink has received critical acclaim for her books and exhibitions that deal conceptually with issues of power and social relations. Car Girls (Aperture, April 2009) is a body of work that Hassink created over five years, photographing major car shows in seven different cities on three continents, including New York, Paris, Geneva, Tokyo, Detroit, and Shanghai. As she describes it, she has used these sites to reflect on "differing cultural values with regard to their ideal images of beauty and women. The series captures the moments during the women's performances when they become more like dolls or tools than individuals.

In Aperture magazine, issue 188, art critic Francine Prose praised the work for its ability to "make us rethink the association between auto and eros as if it had never occurred to us, and to see it newly in all its sheer outrageous strangeness." Car Girls takes a subversively fun yet conceptually astute approach to issues of gender, power, and commodification.

Aperture is pleased to offer this very special limited-edition portfolio by internationally acclaimed artist Jacqueline Hassink to our collectors and car enthusiasts alike. A portfolio of the the artist's work from the project, Hassink photographs, categorizes, and conceptually maps out the "A" and "B" girls that perform at autoshows around the world. These visual observations have less to do with the girls themselves and more to do with the car corporations they work for. Hassink titles each work according to the brand of the car, reinforcing that these girls have no names, yet represent the ultimate dream or fantasy related to luxury and power—all there in front of the eyes of the male car show visitors who desire and yearn for it.

JACQUELINE HASSINK (born in Enschede, the Netherlands, 1966) has published extensively, including The Table of Power (1996), Mindscapes (2003), The Power Book (2007), and Domains of Influence (2008). Her work has been shown at various international venues, and her photographs are in the collections of the Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among other institutions. Hassink is a visiting professor in a number of programs, including the postgraduate photography program at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and at the Visual and Environmental Studies program at Harvard. She is represented by Cohen Amador Gallery, New York.

>View "Car Girls, Interview with Jacqueline Hassink"