His book Vanishing Wheels is Steve Van Vlaenderen’s photographic homage to not only the vintage vehicles sitting in what might be their final resting places but also the stories attached to them.
He captures these vanishing wheels and drags them from the dust to showcase them as a testament to our past and progression, our humanity and ourselves.
But this book has another purpose with the proceeds from its sale being donated to Parkinson Canada to fund research on the disease with which the author and photographer himself lives.
He decided to publish Vanishing Wheels in support of Parkinson’s Canada to fight the disease he has now lived with since 2011.
His message is that Parkinsons doesn’t have to stop someone from doing what they love and want to do, and that is an ethos he has held on to very much himself.
“The book was intended to raise money for Parkinsons Canada for their research. I hope they get the enjoyment out of the artwork but also get the message,” Van Vlaenderen said last Wednesday in the Morden library as part of a book tour in the region.
“By buying the book, they are helping us find a cure for this really unfair disease that has no known cause … every purchase can help us get closer to that goal,” added Darlene Hildebrand, his partner of 18 years.
Van Vlaenderen was involved in car racing in his 20s and 30s and always loved cars. To him, the automobile is a triumph of the human spirit, so it’s no surprise he combined his passion for cars with his love of photography when confronted with the question of what to do now?
The pandemic and later advancing symptoms of Parkinsons curtailed his continuing work on a passion project he had created – Sail on with Parkinson’s – an endeavor which saw Van Vlaenderen and Hildebrand sail the open waters of the Great Lakes to raise awareness for the disease.
Fully retired and facing the realities of the pandemic, Van Vlaenderen needed to find something to occupy his time, and he had a passion for photography which had taken a back seat to other interests.
His return to photography and a much loved hobby was combined with his enthusiasm for cars. In the fall of 2020, they began to take short trips up and down prairie roads looking for abandoned vehicles.
As he looked through the viewfinder, he suddenly realized each of these relics had a story to tell and that he could bring them back and showcase their past and present.
“It’s because of the stories behind them … it’s really just about the stories,” said Van Vlaenderen. “They look at a model T or a model A and they think their great grandfather had one … and they’re abandoned sitting back in the bush or in a barn.”
“The stories are always happy ones. There’s something about cars that bring us back to our childhood … there’s so many memories,” added Hildebrand. “It might have been someone’s first car … cars just seem to bring back nothing but good memories of good times in our lives.
“But the fact that these are not restored ones, these are the ones that have been abandoned, it also makes people very nostalgic. Why can’t we somehow save them, but we realize we can’t,” she added.
“When I look at an abandoned car, I see multiple stories, right from the dreams that the inventor had or manufacturer had … to the person who bought it for the first time,” said Van Vlaenderen. “You look at the stories and the history of the prairies, when these cars came out to the prairies, there weren’t any roads.
“There’s so much attached to it. They’re time capsules,” he concluded.
“I’m not a car person … but even I look at these old cars, even though they’re abandoned, it just makes you smile,” said Hildebrand. “It’s almost unrecognizable as a car, but Steve’s photography makes it a work of art.”
