As part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, M+B is pleased to present Andrew Bush’s Vector Portraits—the celebrated series of color photographs shot between 1989 and 1997 in and around Los Angeles. Using his car as a tripod, Bush mounted a medium-format camera to the passenger seat with a strobe and shutter release cable, cruising the city’s freeways and surface streets while moving in parallel with his subjects—or pausing alongside them in traffic—to capture a fleeting moment inside their rolling, air-conditioned worlds.
Los Angeles, with its miles of asphalt and legendary congestion, provided the perfect stage for these portraits. Each image adheres to a uniform composition: drivers framed at the same scale and distance, their vehicles as much a part of the portrait as the people themselves. Some exude car pride; others appear lost in thought, or mid-conversation with passengers. The series captures the ambiguous in-between space of driving—neither public nor private—where the illusion of control, solitude, and anonymity shapes the way we present ourselves.
First exhibited at M+B in 2009, Vector Portraits remains an indelible portrait of a city in motion, at once mundane, idiosyncratic, and telling. For our anniversary, the presentation includes rarely seen and newly released photographs from the series, offering fresh glimpses into Bush’s intimate, slyly voyeuristic chronicle of Angelenos at 20 to 70 miles per hour.