Air Drive

Taking cues from his childhood imaginings and inspired by science fiction films and artists, Renaud Marion’s Air Drive is a retro-futuristic photographic series depicting his vision of futuristic transportation of wheel-less cars serenely suspended above the ground

- Renaud Marion

Renaud Marion is a 41-year-old photographer, born in the French Alps. He began his love of art as a graffiti artist, but graffiti can be fleeting. To lend permanence to his spray-painted works, Marion decided to photograph them; these pictures he could keep forever. The artist continued photographing street art, even after moving to London. While there, he broadened his list of subjects to include people and architecture. Upon his return to France, Marion decided to fine-tune his photographic competencies at Parisian photography school EFET.

Taking on work as an assistant, the Frenchman had the opportunity to shoot photos in the fashion, advertising and decoration industries before he learned enough to fly solo. “Little by little I became a photographer,” he says.

Marion’s artistic inspiration derives from not only his childhood and scifi but also quirky filmmakers like Terrence Malick and Wes Anderson, and photographers such as Alec Soth and Nadav Kander.

His incredible photography has been featured in several design and travel magazines and his collaborations also extend to communication agencies and architectural firms. The artist would like to drive a flying car before he dies, while the child in him hopes that the technology from science fiction stories will one day become reality.

Taking cues from his childhood imaginings and inspired by science fiction films and artists, Marion depicts his vision of futuristic transportation of wheel-less cars serenely suspended above the ground. But he has included a neat twist: While the vehicle’s’ levitation most definitely smacks of sci-fi, the cars are in fact modified vintage classics, including Chevrolets, Mercedes, Jaguars, Aston Martins and Porsches.