THE 8 X JEFF KOONS – BMW M — Photo production
A photo report from the presentation of the BMW art car “THE 8 X JEFF KOONS”. The showroom is a glass box and this car's paint is a mirror. Every camera…
A photo report from the presentation of THE 8 X JEFF KOONS, the art edition of the BMW M8 Gran Coupé. The car stands on a white plinth in the showroom — yellow, blue and comic-book explosions outside, the "POP!" motif across the tail, red and blue leather and a signed sill inside. A car shown as an artwork wants to be photographed as one: the color edges, the way the paint runs and the join between graphic and metal are the subject, not the engineering.
The showroom is a glass box and this car's paint is a mirror. Every camera position is therefore mostly a decision about what ends up in the flank: the window wall, the blue flags outside it, my own tripod. The three-quarter view from the front is the one place where the graphic stays readable across the whole length and the glass behind the car reflects the sky rather than the car park.
Exposure is set for the yellow. On a wrap this loud it is the first thing to clip, and once it clips the black outlines lose their edge — a comic book turns into a patch of color. So darker than the room suggests, and the shadows come back afterwards: the blue takes that, the yellow does not.
Two frames carry the edition rather than the model: the “POP!” on its white star above the door, and the black sill plate with the lettering and the blue signature. Without them this is an M8 in a loud wrap. Inside, the color scheme changes completely — red and blue leather, a cognac door card, a violet ambient strip above it — and that is its own exposure: daylight through the window wall and ceiling light mix differently inside the car than they do outside on the plinth. The “Service Counter” sign in the background of the rear shot stays in. The car stood in a working dealership, not a studio, and a report about it may show that.
- Art & car
- Jeff Koons x BMW
