In 1967, Jean-Luc Godard released his celebrated film Weekend. Its most famous scene, in which the two protagonists stubbornly overtake an extensive traffic jam in a Facel Vega Facellia cabriolet, is one of the longest tracking shots in the history of cinema: the camera slowly passes by the line of about 40 motionless cars whose occupants employ the most varied techniques to kill time. In what for Godard is a metaphor for life--the camera's journey ends in a pool of blood, the victims and the crippled cars have meanwhile been cleared from the street--photographer Pascal Cavin sees an impressive catalogue of cars. By isolating and labeling the individual vehicles in 45 stills, he creates a thorough historical inventory of the automobile types populating the streets in the late 1960s.
