The Car That Takes Me Back

The yellow is what makes this Volkswagen stand out in the photograph.

But the color is not why I photographed it.

It was the Beetle.

My first car was a blue Volkswagen Beetle that I owned while I was stationed at Fort Knox in 1983.

I was not yet married.

A year later, while living in Darmstadt, Germany, I owned another one, a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle.

By then my life had changed.

I was married, and my wife was pregnant with our daughter.

One night she woke me and told me it was time to go.

That Beetle was the car I depended upon to take my pregnant wife from Darmstadt to Frankfurt for the birth of our child.

Afterward, it was the car I drove to pick up my wife and newborn daughter from the hospital and bring them home.

I kept that Beetle until approximately two months after my daughter was born.

So when I see a Volkswagen Beetle from this era, I don't simply see an old car.

It takes me back.

That happened when I encountered this one in Old San Juan in September 2014.

The car was not mine.

The color was different.

The country was different.

Decades had passed.

But I knew exactly where that shape could take me.

The Car That Takes Me Back presents a classic Volkswagen Beetle in profile on a street in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The automobile dominates the composition, its saturated yellow body separating strongly from the comparatively neutral stone, pavement and architecture surrounding it.

The side view emphasizes the Beetle's distinctive silhouette: the rounded roof, curved fenders, sloping rear body and compact proportions that made the Volkswagen one of the most immediately recognizable automobile designs of its era.

Visible dents, scratches and wear have been retained as part of the vehicle's character. The car is presented not as a restored collector's object but as an automobile encountered in ordinary urban life.

The surrounding environment remains visible enough to establish place. A stone balustrade, palms, construction equipment and Banco Popular architecture place the vehicle within the active streetscape of Old San Juan rather than separating it from its surroundings.

For Colón, however, recognition preceded formal observation.

The Beetle's familiar shape carried an existing personal association. The photograph was therefore made not merely because an unusual vintage automobile appeared on the street, but because encountering a Beetle of this era immediately recalled automobiles that had accompanied important transitions in the photographer's earlier life.

A car can disappear from your life and still remain capable of taking you somewhere.

My first Volkswagen Beetle belonged to one chapter.

Fort Knox.

1983.

My first car.

A young man before marriage.

The second Beetle belonged to another.

Darmstadt.

1984.

Marriage.

My wife pregnant with our daughter.

And then the night she woke me and said it was time.

I remember relying on that car to get us where we needed to go.

Later, I remember using it to bring my wife and our newborn daughter home.

The car itself eventually left my life.

The memory attached to it did not.

That is why a Volkswagen Beetle from this era still catches me.

When I encountered this yellow one in Old San Juan in 2014, the nostalgia was already there. It was not something I discovered years later while looking at the photograph.

Seeing the car took me back then.

It still does now.

There is another connection I can recognize when looking back at 2014.

Only a few months before making this photograph, I had returned to Germany with my daughter and showed her places connected to the period when she was born.

Then, in September, I encountered this Beetle in Puerto Rico.

I cannot say that I consciously connected those two experiences when I pressed the shutter.

But I can see the relationship now.

Photography preserved the car I happened to encounter that afternoon.

Memory supplied the road leading away from it.

And that road still leads me home.

Preserved as the one hundred forty-first accessioned photograph in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing, The Car That Takes Me Back was made in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 1, 2014.

The photograph records a yellow Volkswagen Beetle encountered along the street near Banco Popular in Old San Juan. The surrounding architecture and urban elements establish the automobile as part of an active streetscape rather than a staged automotive portrait.

The work's significance within the Studio archive originates in Colón's personal relationship with the Volkswagen Beetle.

His first automobile was a blue Volkswagen Beetle owned while stationed at Fort Knox in 1983. In 1984, while living in Darmstadt, Germany, he owned a 1973 Beetle during the period surrounding the birth of his daughter.

That automobile carried Colón and his pregnant wife from Darmstadt to Frankfurt when it was time for their daughter to be born and later brought mother and newborn child home.

Consequently, encountering Beetles of this generation became an immediate trigger for autobiographical memory.

The yellow automobile photographed in Puerto Rico is not presented as a substitute for either vehicle Colón once owned. Instead, it functions as an object of recognition capable of reconnecting different places and periods of one life.

The work distinguishes between the photograph's original intent and its later reflection. The nostalgic association with the Beetle was already present at the moment of exposure. The relationship between this September 2014 encounter and Colón's earlier 2014 return to Germany with his daughter emerged more clearly only through later reflection.