Detailed photos capture exploded sports cars

Mind-blowing images by Fabian Oefner at the MB&F M.A.D. Gallery The MB&F M.A.D. Gallery is delighted to present a series of prints by Swiss artist Fabian Oefner. Fabian has carved out his reputation by fusing the fields of art and science, creating images appealing to heart and mind. He is constantly on the lookout for capturing life moments that are invisible to the human eye: phenomena like sound waves, centripetal forces, iridescence, fire and even magnetic ferrofluids, among others. The artworks on display at the M.A.D. Gallery from Fabian's series are mind-boggling. The three images of the Disintegrating series are exploded views of classic sports cars that Fabian has painstakingly created by deconstructing vintage roadster scale-models, photographing each component, piece by piece in a very specific position, to create the illusion of an exploding automobile.

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Classic sports cars appear to be frozen as they explode in this series of images by Swiss artist Fabien Oefner
Oefner deconstructed scale models of 1950s and 1960s sports cars and photographed the parts individually. He then digitally arranged them to create an image that makes it look as if a life-sized car is exploding.
"What you see in these images, is a moment that never existed in real life," said Oefner. "What looks like a car falling apart is in fact a moment in time that has been created artificially by blending hundreds of individual images together."
The artist sketched where the individual parts would be placed before each model, containing over a thousand components, was taken apart piece by piece. Titled Disintegration, the series includes a 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, a 1961 Jaguar E-Type and a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO.
To set up the shots, Oefner arranged the pieces with fine needles and string to create the right angle. He photographed each of the components then combined the pictures to form a single image using Adobe Photoshop.
"These are possibly the slowest high-speed images ever captured," he said. "It took almost two months to create an image that looks as if it was captured in a fraction of a second. The whole disassembly in itself took more than a day for each car due to the complexity of the models. But that's a bit of a boy thing. There's an enjoyment in the analysis, discovering something by taking it apart, like peeling an onion."
The photographs are currently on display at the M.A.D Gallery in Geneva, Switzerland, along with another series by Oefner called Hatch. This set features images in which a 1967 Ferrari 330 P4 appears to have just broken out of a shell like an egg hatching.
These images of "the birth of a car" were created by filling a latex mould of the model Ferrari with a layer of gypsum to produce a series of shells. The shells were thrown at the model or dropped on top of it, with the aim of capturing the smashing so the car looks like it is breaking out from it. A microphone was connected to the camera to trigger the shutter to close at the exact moment of the shell breaking.
"I have always been fascinated by the clean, crisp looks of 3D renderings," said the artist. "So I tried to use that certain type of aesthetic and combine it with the strength of real photography. These images are also about capturing time: either in stopping it as in the Hatch series or inventing it as in the Disintegrating series."

from  dezeen