Keith Hawkins
Dr. Despain
Transdisciplinary Communications CODE 101
23 August 2024
Reflection #2 – The Magic of you first car
The magic of your first car is a photo essay that shows young adults in Los Angeles who have just started driving their own cars. This piece uses images to allow the viewer to make their own interpretations of what the authors are trying to communicate. The texts in the article are used to steer the reader in the right direction of what the author is communicating.
In the images the young adults are not really performing a task, but it seems like they are doing things outside of their homes to have an excuse to drive their new cars and exercise their newly found form of freedom and independence. I feel this because of my personal experience of being 16 and having my own car. It felt like a safe place and gave me access to a lot more places and freedom than I was used to. When we all received our first cars, my friends and I would go on random adventures to a park or any area to just be away from home and not have to spend money.
The top photo shows two young women in a car that appear to be very relaxed. The introduction of the photo essay article talks about how young adults can ride with the windows down and be free from parents’ overly watchful eyes. This photo shows the women’s hair blowing in the wind and their faces look very calm and in a carefree or relaxed state. The lines from the article that I stated previously hint at the overall theme of newly found freedom that this photo essay displays.
The second photo in the article really jumps out at me because I feel that I can relate to it. It shows a young man just sitting in his parked car most likely outside of his home by himself. I know that for me personally when I first started driving my car was like my getaway space from everything. If I needed to make a call that I didn’t want siblings or my parents to hear I could go sit in my car. The text that is affiliated with this image uses the phrase a “home away from home.” A young adult’s first car can be their getaway from a toxic home environment or anything and I feel that this image perfectly represents that.
Through looking at these images in this photo essay, I can learn a bit about this community. I can infer that the people in this community are more outdoorsy because most of the photos are of young adults outside enjoying natural air and light from the sky.
The quote attached to the picture of the two young adults and the dog adds important detail to the overall theme of the photo essay. “Driving around on her own for the first time was exhilarating” Describing the feeling as being exhilarating explains why the teenagers in the photo essay are driving to go sit on the side of a highway. It feels good to them to have the freedom and ability to just go somewhere of their own will.
In my opinion the writing and the images complement each other very well and do a good job explaining the community to the reader. The piece shows how in the middle of a pandemic, young adults can use their new abilities of operating a vehicle to get away and destress themselves. The image of the man sitting in his parked car outside of houses pops out to me because of the two light glares in the picture. On the left side is the sunset, which gives the image a glare. The upper right-hand side of the image really shows the photographer’s creativity by showing the camera flash in the rearview mirror to produce a second glare of light in the image. I would use a similar strategy while taking photos of my own to keep the visual interesting.
Another technique I noticed in the photo essay was in the image of the couple on the side of the highway. The photographer focused on the two in the middle and showed the cars driving by in a blurred background. This shows how the two are focused on each other and losing themselves in the moment. This is a very clever technique of just focusing on a part of the image to give a message through an image.
I was able to make my own interpretations of what I was seeing in the images through personal experiences.
Work Cited
Schell, Adali, and Remy Tumin. “The Magic of Your First Car.” The New York Times, 9 February 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/09/style/first-car-young-americans.html. Accessed 24 August 2024.