‘Auto Photo Manual’ Brings Compelling Cars to Your Coffee Table

Despite my admittedly obsessive intake of automotive imagery, I learned of photographer Benedict Redgrove’s work through the stunning space-themed captures featured in the book NASA // Past and Present Dreams of the Future. Stark yet rich, graphically arresting but honest, the London-based photographer’s imagery of shuttles, satellites, and all manner of space paraphernalia spoke to me with their fetishistic levels of care and appreciation for form, texture, and detail.

Yet Redgrove’s career launched 20 years ago in an entirely different genre than his space-age efforts. His start came with exotic cars, a realm he explores in a recently announced book project, Auto Photo Manual: The Art of Car Photography. The links between the earthbound and extraterrestrial subjects become comprehensible upon closer inspection.

“I think order and functionality to a process is something that just appeals to me,” Redgrove tells Robb Report. “All those things like jet engines or anything that’s driven to have a purpose—there tends to be an inherent order to its design and a sort of regularity, and sometimes symmetry. Those things really appeal to my mind.”

Redgrove elevates mechanical objects to a higher plane in geometrically frank, yet alluringly creative ways. His body of automotive work encompassed in the book begins with his first major shoot, a feature on Bertone concept cars he shot for Wallpaper magazine in 2004. Subsequent commissions resulted in images that include the chiseled purity of a Lotus Esprit S1 in mirrored reflections, an otherworldly take on the autonomous Roborace Robocar (opening image), a section of a Red Bull RB12 Formula 1 car poised like a mantis, and the hourglass carapace of an Aston Martin Valkyrie as captured from an unexpected overhead perspective.

These captures reflect a level of care and deep observation that informs his later work for the U.S. space agency. When asked about his intrinsic sense of rigor, he says, “My work develops because I want to bring some sort of purity to the images and refine them down to a point where the only things [in the shot] are things I want you to see. If we can remove things that are superfluous, then we will.” Yet for Redgrove, it’s important to know when to stop paring down. Says the photographer, “It can get to a point where it becomes too clinical, and you get a technically perfect but soulless shot. And I’m not interested in that. I’m just interested in maintaining a composition that has a sense of harmony and balance.”

In addition to full-bleed images of finished works, and explanations of his behind-the-scenes process, Redgrove’s book includes a chapter dubbed “Auto-ism,” which focuses on exploring how his neurodivergence plays a hand in his creative process. “I think there’s enough going on in my head for 99 percent of the day. It’s kind of like a constant explosion, like a firework display of ideas and thoughts and things that I need to be doing. And so I try and bring a sense of calmness, and order, and purity, because it doesn’t really exist anywhere else in my life.”

Redgrove’s 256-page coffee-table book, available for backing on Kickstarter, is anticipated to be published in November of this year.

Click here for more photos from Auto Photo Manual: The Art of Car Photography.