Ten Cadillac cars, the oldest the 1949 model, the youngest the 1963, are buried in a pasture on Route 66 west of Amarillo, Texas. They were buried in 1974 at the same angle as the Giza Pyramids, facing west, as an ode to the “Cadillac Fins”. The Cadillacs those days had the flashiest tail fins. Over time they have been stripped of the fins, even some doors are gone. Fairly quickly they became an interactive installation, people started spray painting graffiti on them. The story is that you better take a photo of what you painted because it will be painted over by someone else in an hour. The graffiti “artists” leave their spray cans everywhere to be picked up and used by the next artist. I had not been in 10 years and in that time the cars have really deteriorated; the pasture soil is packed hard from the thousands of people who stop every year to paint and photograph the cars. A drone guy climbed on top of the middle car and started taking drone photos, that’s him in the white shirt. The spray paint cans lying everywhere take away from the scene for me, even though they are a real part of the picture. I saturated the colors in this because I thought it made the picture more appealing. We are home from our 3,000 mile road trip, it was a great vacation. We had to come home to rest!
I have heard and seen photo's of these cars before . I didn't realize they had been there so long .. such a shame the 'artists' don't take their can away with them ..,
I think I've seen pictures from when they weren't painted (which I kind of liked better because it looked so odd to see perfectly good cars buried like that!). That being said, this is a really colorful and fun shot.
