Martin Roemers’ Homo Mobilis photographs people with their vehicles worldwide

Martin Roemers’ Homo Mobilis is a book-length series of portraits that pairs people with the vehicles they drive, photographed across countries including the US, India, Ukraine, Senegal, the Czech Republic, China and the Netherlands. Roemers photographs an eclectic range of transport — cars, trucks, campervans, invalid trikes, handcarts, minibuses, people‑carriers, ice‑cream vans, tractors, road‑rollers, donkey‑carts, motorbikes and hearses — then isolates each vehicle and its owner by erecting a large white cloth backdrop on scaffolding.

The reviewer compares the effect to Richard Avedon’s 1985 In the American West series: eliminating context focuses attention on the vehicle’s textures, colours and patina and makes even dilapidated vehicles appear as art objects. The work is presented as supporting the idea that the vehicle someone chooses is an expression of personality and, possibly, value systems.

Roemers’ subjects range from tailors and vegetable sellers to ice‑cream vendors, couriers and artists — for example, tailors Bhola and Akash in a Piaggio van in Nashik, drag queens Sasha and Brett with a Toyota in Santa Monica, and a courier returning to Lviv, Ukraine, from the frontline in his Toyota.

Key Topics

Culture, Martin Roemers, Homo Mobilis, India, Ukraine, Vehicles