Martha Berriman is a commercial photographer working in the Detroit area.  With a love of photographing both people and traditional hot rods, the images you see here are an accumulation of a body of work that has enabled her to do both.   

 This project started out as a request to photograph a friend’s car club, based in the metropolitan Detroit area, in late 1999.  Those initial images eventually led to what you see here, an effort to document the people of the traditional hot rod culture, along with the cars they build and drive and live their lives around. To them, hot rods are not just a part of their lives; they are the major focus.  They are not just something to get you from one place to another; often they are the reason for the destination.  Many of them have built the cars themselves, some have not. Many belong to car clubs; some do not, the one thing they have in common is that they all live and love old style hot rods and Kustom cars.  

These images were first exhibited in November of 2000 during the Detroit Focus 2000 exhibition. Accumulating images for the project has taken her to major annual events in Southern California, such as the Shifter’s Anti-Blessing, West Coast Kustoms Paso Robles show, The Blessing of the Cars, San Francisco’s Billetproof, The Lonestar Roundup in Austin, Viva Las Vegas, The Hunnert Car Pileup in Illinois, and numerous other hot rod shows around the U.S.  Since the first exhibition, they have been shown at the Detroit Artist’s Market and various galleries and venues in the Detroit metropolitan area.