Truck Artists

A truck depot is about the last place on earth you’d expect to find an art scene. But in Pakistan, the tradition of painting and detailing trucks adds glitter and glamour to the transport business, and offers a colorful distraction in a country tormented by war and political instability.

Pakistan’s trucks rule the road. Their candy colored cabs of icy turquoise, deep cinnamon or iridescent green create fast-moving splashes of color cutting through the haze of exhaust on Karachi’s overburdened roads, and their studded crowns of perforated metal and gleaming mirror mosaics glint like armor under the omnipresent sun.