Tatyana Shchepanskaya

The study of a technically complex thing (automobile) in the context of anthropology of mobility brings to discussion the questions of the ratio of material and immaterial aspects of the functioning of a subject; the materiality and mobility; and the semiosis ofthings by means of the added materiality in the course of social communication. Visual materials - the photos of cars made by the author in 2006-2016 on the roads of St. Petersburg and its suburbs - have formed the empirical basis of the article. In their interpretation, the ethnographic field records of interviews with drivers, observations and radio negotiations during trips collected by the author during the same period in the same and adjacent regions of the northwest of Russia are used.