Rudy Vega‘s camera reimagines the Car Park as a vessel by which to produce views emphasizing aesthetic potential. With a few exceptions, Vega photographs when the car parks are empty allowing him to accentuate the view produced by the windows of the parking structure. In doing so Vega produces a frame within a frame whereby the adjoining landscaping or adjacent buildings come to the forefront to become the prominent subject. The openings of the car park, as noted, function to allow natural light to fill the environment reducing what would otherwise become a claustrophobic environment. But in Vega’s photographs the very same openings produce a theatrical stage, a cinematic screen or even a canvas hosting a painting rendering the outward view. Sans the automobile the car park becomes an unwitting collaborator to an aesthetic project whereby the lines painted on the concrete floor which typically demarcate the parking spot is now viewed as a formal element of leading lines and the brutalist concrete beams and supports morph into an elegant formal frame. And as with any photograph the quality of light has an important role to play and here the car park’s architecture fulfills its role in shaping the light.
In the end Car Park Views offers up the contemporary car park as a place from which to enjoy the view.