A grey Volvo drifts from the centre of a bright suburban road and glances against the side of an older parked car.1 The door crumples and the driver’s side window shatters. A tin of boiled sweets slides across the top of the dashboard, and a card air freshener swings from the rear-view mirror. Glimpsed for just a few seconds in a television commercial, this red car and its 1994 British registration plate are anachronistic. In the context of a television commercial, this car snags our attention, and becomes what Roland Barthes describes as a photographic punctum that pierces the ...
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