What does your car say about you? A global portrait of people and their journeys, from Shanghai to Santa Monica | Photography

II find in my novels that I rarely write “car,” “van,” or “truck”—I tend to always specify the make and model, often with some pedantic precision. Why should this be so? After all, I’m not driving, someone who claims to be able to drive (I actually learned that), but has never passed a driving test. However, ironically, I am a car fan – I admit, I adore petrol – perhaps as a result of spending long hours, or perhaps years, in the back of the mini-cabs that transported me here and there around London. Through my long experience using minicabs, I have found that most conversations with minicab drivers are often about cars. I’ve learned a lot.

There is another reason I would like to identify. I am convinced that the type of car or vehicle you drive is as much an expression of your personality as it is the clothes you wear or the home decor you consider your own. Even the nicest mid-priced cars — the Toyota Prius, Kia Picanto, and Volkswagen Jetta, for example — make a discreet statement about you, the owner. You chose that car – and your choice was surprisingly eloquent.

All of this is an introduction to Martin Römer’s Homo Mobilis, a fascinating series of photographs of people captured with the various vehicles they drive. Furthermore, I would argue that these images carry the premise that a car, truck, van, etc., is an extension and window into their owner’s personality, and quite possibly an indicator of their value system as well.

Rumers has traveled far and wide photographing the various vehicles that catch his eye. Among the many countries he visited are the United States, India, Ukraine, Senegal, the Czech Republic, China and the Netherlands. The type of vehicle he depicts is equally eclectic – not just cars and trucks but also campervans, junked tricycles, handcarts, minibuses, people carriers, ice cream vans, tractors, road rollers, donkey carts, motorcycles and hearses. The variety of vehicles on display is astonishing, but one’s eye is inevitably drawn to the eccentric: mud-splattered and multi-scratched taxis, rust-badged family saloons, paint-covered lorries, and MOT-defying minibuses.

However, Romers’s genius is to remove the geographical and urban context of the vehicles in his photographs. Richard Avedon shot his famous series of photographs in 1985, set in the American West, with subjects sitting in front of a completely neutral, starkly white backdrop. The effect was to focus all attention on the sitter. These humans became exactly what they presented to the camera lens – there was no distraction, no prop, no identity beyond their facial features and any visible pieces of clothing. It was a unique form of desolate and unsettling portraiture.

Romers cleverly adopted the same technique and isolated his vehicles and their owners and passengers by erecting a huge backdrop of white fabric draped over a member of scaffolding and parking cars and trucks in front of it. Pickups, trucks, three-wheelers and rickshaws look like they’re stuck in a vast, empty snowfield. It’s the same effect as Avedon: all the focus is on the car, its textures, decorations, colors and contents, in a way that makes it look more like an art installation or a form of exotic modern sculpture. The fact that these images are effectively and primarily about transportation seems secondary. It is the aesthetic gains that resonate in these images. A dilapidated jalopy has never looked more interesting, and in a strange way, photographed in this way, it becomes a beautiful object in its own right – its form suddenly divorced from its mundane function.

My additional observation is not so much a criticism as a kind of compliment. Romers’s unique vehicle photographs can go on and on, as it were—the subject matter is almost infinite, after all—but one finds oneself wondering whether it’s possible to expand the range of demographics. The cars, taxis, and trucks in these photos are largely owned by poor, hard-working people, as the dilapidated and rickety means of transportation attest. What can rummers do to soccer moms in huge SUVs? Or executive chauffeurs with shiny Mercedes S-Class limousines or BMW 7 Series cars? Or the wealthy racers with their Lamborghinis and Maserati? Or cyclists with their bikes? It’s a tribute to the complete success of this photography project, we couldn’t ask for more please.

In his book Death Drive, writer Stephen Bayley declared: “Cars have a magical quality. No other manufactured thing has the same disturbing appeal. Cars are more emotional than anything else we make or use.” Romers’ work at Homo Mobilis proves the truth of this statement and also that the appeal of a particular car does not necessarily have anything to do with price, design or exclusivity. “We are what we eat” is a tried and tested truism; These amazing photos prove that the phrase “we are all we lead to” is absolutely true.

Homo Mobilis (Lannoo Publishers) is priced at £50. To support The Guardian, order your copy for £45 at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.