The heights

Matthew Porter presents a portfolio of twenty-five images of vintage cars, captured in midair as they careen over city streets and highway intersections. Each photograph is a freeze-frame - a hypothetical film still from a pulp-fiction chase scene. The photographs, known as the "flying car" series, are a hybrid of hyperreality and studied, topographic description, part bittersweet nostalgia and part ironic reinvention of a classic American trope. Rachel Kushner contributes an original piece of writing that riffs on the aesthetic and aspirational nature of the American car. - Back cover