14 DAY TRIAL // Tyler Shields, perhaps one of the hottest photographers right now, is gaining quite a reputation for destroying (mostly by fire) expensive items for the sake of art, of snapping the perfect picture. This time, he did it to a vintage and very costly Rolls-Royce and, of course, the whole thing was captured on camera.
TMZ reports that Shields and his crew headed out to the Mojave Desert outside Los Angeles over the weekend, where they rigged the expensive car with explosive and then detonated it, just so he could get the photos he needs for his next spread.
Before you can say “so what?,” think of this: the Rolls-Royce in question is believed to have been worth an estimated $50,000 (€39,470). Art or no art, that’s a lot of money.
On the other hand, the slow-mo video of the explosion is chillingly beautiful, so we assume the photos will have been worth the high production cost.
The Birkin bag incident
This isn’t the first time that Shields does something like this: in 2012, when he was still dating Clint Eastwood’s daughter Francesca, an up and coming model, he set on fire what was thought to be an original Hermes Birkin bag, just so he could shoot Francesca playing with it as it was consumed by the flames.
Birkin bags are among the most coveted totes in the world, and they’re also eye-wateringly expensive and unavailable: you have to go on a waiting list to actually get your hands on one because they take years to make. This precise model that Shields burned was estimated at $100,000 (€78,463) and was brand new.
The moment word of this got out online, Shields was criticized for literally burning thousands of dollars when there were children who died of starvation in the world – and in the US too. He wasn’t just criticized: the backlash was so severe that he had no other choice but to speak up in his defense. Art should come with no price tag, and as long as he burned his own money, he didn’t get why people were offended, he said.
Still, he ended up donating the abovementioned amount to charity as a way of apologizing, but reports claimed that the bag had been a fake all along and that he only claimed it was genuine to get more media attention.
If that was the case, his little scheme worked perfectly in his favor, despite the initial backlash. This said, do you think the Rolls-Royce was a fake too? Could it have been a replica or an actual Rolls-Royce that would have been scrapped either way?
Below is the video. You be the judge.