Road Racing - Drivers of the 60's and 70's - A great book by Linda Weldon

Road Racing - Drivers of the 60's and 70's

When discussing this book, the most relevant issues is that it proves how deep and strong the bench was when it came to American road racing during the period it covers — way beyond today’s, subjectively. A lesser matter is that the photographer was a woman, still at least something of a curiosity in the paddock during those years. It was even more unusual for any racing shooter to have instinctive skill for bringing humanity to the sport.

Linda Weldon was uncommonly good at doing that. She was an art student from a car-oriented Los Angeles family when she picked up a camera and headed over to Riverside International Raceway in 1966. She retrieved a paddock pass and was then escorted in by none other than Stirling Moss, who was working as an announcer and local TV analyst. What an entrance.

Weldon used her access with impressive results, collected here in 100 hardcover pages with her black-and-white imagery. It’s heavily oriented toward candid photography. Unquestionably, that’s what gives this book its individuality: its depiction of drivers in elements where you wouldn’t expect to find them. Early on, Derek Bell is nestled in a Formula 5000 car, rather than in an endurance Porsche.

Any number of other frames are unexpected, mainly because they don’t always make the cut in these studies. Lothar Motschenbacher commiserates with Bruce McLaren’s U.S.-born consigliere, Teddy Mayer. Chuck Parson’s lined Appalachian features show the weariness of struggling with a Can-Am car. Ignazio Giunti smiles cheerily from the pit wall months before dying in Argentina. Evocative material.

This book is a compilation of pictures taken at a time when photographers were able to get very close to the action.  I used a Nikon camera with various telephoto lenses.  Tri-X and Plus-X film was utilized.  Each shot had to count, so very little color was used.

The years took a toll on the negatives that were not stored properly.  I recovered all that survived in boxes to assemble this book.

Hopefully, these pictures will bring back many exciting memories from this era of Road Racing of the 60′s and 70′s.

-Linda

Website: http://websites.longerdays.com/linda/

Images contained in the website are copyrighted © by Linda Weldon Photography.  All rights reserved.  They may not be reproduced in any form, nor any commercial use made of them, without the permission of Linda Weldon Photography.