Gas and Glamour is a tribute to America’s golden age of the automobile, a time when cars themselves were objects of beauty and the act of driving was celebrated. Those cars are no longer on the streets today, but the celebratory roadside vernacular architecture from that era remains.

As a photographer, I wanted to connect with that lost design history and capture L.A.’s car-culture-induced optimism and ambition reflected in polychromatic, star-spangled coffee shops, gas stations, car washes, and other structures that once lured the gaze of passing motorists.