John Edwin Mason: Racing Photography

Life Magazine, Interracial Love, and Drag Racing, 1965

[Note:  This is a cross-post from my documentary photography blog.]

Every now and then, the gods send you a moment of serendipity -- something unexpected that shoots a small shiver of delight up your spine -- whether you deserve it or not.  I had one of those moments, yesterday, when my friend Chuck Mathewes emailed me a link to a slideshow on the New York Times' website -- "The Case of Loving v. Bigotry".  The second photo in the series (that's it directly below) made me smile because what is says about the culture of drag racing.

Let me explain.

 

Grey Villet:  Richard and Mildred Loving watching drag races from the pit area, Sumerduck dragway, Sumerduck, Va., 1965.  {Click on the image to see a larger version.]

 

This photo wasn't intended to be about drag racing.  As far as Life magazine and its photographer, Grey Villet, were concerned, it was about an important episode in American history.

Villet made the image in 1965, while he was working on a story about Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple challenging the constitutionality of Virginia's law prohibiting marriage between partners of different races.  Here's how the Times' Julie Bosman tells the story:

In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested in a nighttime raid in their bedroom by the sheriff of Caroline County, Va.  Their crime:  being married to each other.  The Lovings -- Mildred, who was of African-American and Native American descent, and Richard, a bricklayer with a blond buzz cut -- were ordered by a judge to leave Virginia for 25 years.  ...[The Lovings struggled] to return home after living in exile in Washington, where Mildred, gentle in person but persistent on paper, wrote pleading letters to Robert F. Kennedy and the A.C.L.U.  Two lawyers took their case to the Supreme Court, which struck down miscegenation laws in more than a dozen states.  The Lovings' belief in the simple rightness of their plea never wavered.

It's a tremendous story, no doubt about it.  But that's not what gave me a charge when I saw the photo.  The thrill comes from knowing that it makes perfect sense that the Lovings could relax at a drag strip.  The photo confirms an argument that I've been making about the strange and wonderful racial culture of drag racing.  All over the country, and even in the segregated South, drag racing has long been an oasis of racial tolerance.

My long-term documentary project, Democracy of Speed, explores the racial and gender cultures of drag racing.  While the project concentrates on Eastside Dragway, in Waynesboro, Virginia, I've spent quite a bit of time at Sumerduck Dragway, the drag strip in the photo above, which is still very much in operation.

Oddly enough, It was a little bit of bigotry -- my own bigotry -- that got me into the project.

When I first went to a drag race, seven or eight years ago, I had a pretty good idea what I was going to find -- great photo ops and a bunch of dumb rednecks.  I was right about the photos, but stunningly wrong about the people.

First of all, they're weren't dumb.  It takes a fair amount of smarts to be a successful racer.

Second, the racers weren't rednecks, some of them were women, and a many of them were black.  That's what drew me to the project -- easy, unselfconscious gender and racial integration in a place where I (and probably most people) least expected it, in a working-class Southern setting.

Over the years, I've made a lot of photos, conducted scores of interviews, and spent many hours pouring over old books, magazines, and newspapers trying to make sense of what I saw on that first day at the track.  I've discovered that drag racing is unique among motor sports in the way that, from the very beginning, it has accepted and often welcomed women racers and racers of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.  You can read more of what I have to say on the subject, here, and see a gallery of my photos, here.

* * *

Grey Villet's photo of the Lovings at Sumerduck Dragway eventually accompanied  "The Crime of Being Married:  A Virginia Couple Fights to Overturn an Old Law Against Miscegenation", which appeared in Life's 18 March 1966 edition.  You can read it and see more of his photos, here.  (At least you can if you're using Internet Explorer.  It doesn't seem to be displaying on Firefox, at the moment.)

It's a small irony that Villet, a white man, was born and raised in South Africa, a nation that modeled its laws against racially mixed marriages on America's.  Villet himself seems to have been a racial liberal.  He left South Africa for New York City, when he was in his twenties.  He soon found himself on the staff of Life, for which he sympathetically covered Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the crisis surrounding the integration of the schools, in Little Rock, Arkansas, among other major events.  He even shot a story on drag racing, in Moline, Illinois, which was never published.

You can see more of Villet's photography at the Monroe Gallery's website and browse through several thousand of his photos at Getty Images.

Drag Racing & Diversity in C-Ville Weekly

As couple of weeks ago, Kyle Daly, a reporter for C-ville, a weekly newspaper, interviewed me in connection with an article that he was writing on racial diversity in motor sports.  The story, "Speed is Colorblind," came out yesterday, and it's terrific.  You can read it here.  (By the way, it's accompanied by several of my photos, one of which you can see below).

 

 

Speed is Colorblind, C-ville, 11-17 July 2011.

 

As many readers of this blog already know, I'm working on a long-term documentary project called Democracy of Speed.  It combines history, interviews, and photos to look at the ways in which drag racing has been unusually welcoming of women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups.  You can read about Democracy of Speed, here, and see photos from the project, here.

Eastside Speedway: 47th Annual Easter Sunday Funny Car Show, with Bunny Burkett

I've said it before, and I imagine that I'll say it again:  The racing season doesn't start until the legendary Bunny Burkett makes a few passes down the drag strip at Eastside Speedway, on Easter Sunday.  I don't care what the NHRA or Nascar or Formula One have been up to.  Unless I see the Easter Bunny in her Funny Car, the season hasn't really begun.

Easter was late, this year, but it finally arrived, bringing with it the 47th Annual Funny Car Classic.

 

 

Bunny Burkett performs a burnout in her Alcohol Funny Car.  Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.  (All photos copyright John Edwin Mason, 2011.  Click on any image to see a much larger version.)

The Funny Car Classic isn't a race.  The track books Funny Cars (and this year Fuel Altereds) that they know will entertain the fans with thundering loud, smokey burnouts and, with a little luck, blazingly fast passes down the track.  The track was tricky, yesterday, so the passes weren't anything to brag about.  But the burnouts were everything fans could have wanted.

 

 

Bunny Burkett and fans.  Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.

I wasn't exaggerating when I called Bunny "legendary."  She was one of the first women to reach the highest ranks of drag racing -- a true pioneer.  She survived a horrible crash and came back to resume her racing career.  And she's waged a heroic battle against cancer.  (Among other things, she uses her continuing popularity with fans to raise money for cancer research.)   I was lucky enough to have a long interview with Bunny, as few years ago.  You can read an account of it, here.

 

 

Fans cover their ears, in anticipation of the howl emitted by a Fuel Altered's motor.  Eastside Speeday, 24 April 2011.

A couple of thousand fans turned out for the show, packing the grandstands and lining the track.

 

 

Tony Connoy performs a burnout in his Funny Car.  Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.

 

 

Gary "Li'l Bear" Pritchett performs a burnout in his Funny Car.  Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.

Gary "Li'l Bear" Pritchett, Bunny's godson and protege, was among the racers at yesterday's show.  He's making a mark for himself in drag racing.  Besides driving (and working on) Bunny's second Funny Car, he's a been member of several  NHRA Top Fuel racing team, including Morgan Lucas' and Hot Rod Fuller's.

 

 

Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.

 

 

Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.

Of course, most cars at the track, yesterday, weren't Funny Cars or Fuel Altereds.  Eastside is the home tracks of hundreds of grassroots drag racers.

 

 

Bunny Burkett (near lane) and Gary "Li'l Bear" Pritchett.  Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.

The highlight of the day's action was probably the side-by-side passes that Bunny and Li'l Bear made near the end of the day.  As you can see, the protege edged out the teacher.

 

 

Window of Bunny's Funny Car.  Eastside Speedway, 24 April 2011.

 

Kodachrome at the Races: The Southern Bracket Racing Association Finals, 2010

Note, this is a cross-post with my other blog:  I shot my last two rolls of Kodachrome at the Southern Bracket Racing Association Finals, last October.  At the time, I didn't actually think that they were going to be the last.  Sure, I knew that Dwayne's Photo, the only lab in the US that developed the film, was going to stop processing it at the end of the year.  (Given the complexity and expense of the process, the end of Dwayne's processing meant the end of the road for the venerable color slide film.  You can read one of many eulogies for Kodachrome, here.)  But I figured that I'd have the time and occasion to shoot more rolls, in November and December.

I was wrong, but I'm not complaining.  There couldn't have been a more appropriate place for me to shoot those last two rolls than at the SBRA Finals, at Eastside Dragway.

 

 

All photos copyright John Edwin Mason, 2011.  Click directly on any image to see a larger version.

Over the last several years, I've spent hundreds of hours at Eastside, working on Democracy of Speed, my documentary project about the culture of drag racing.  I was introduced the sport at Eastside, and it was there that I discovered that drag racing is more racially diverse and more open to women's participation than any other motor sport.  I say more about drag racing and diversity (and show many more photos), here.

 

 

Like many others who know little about the scene, I thought that the people who go drag racing were just a bunch of rednecks.  And you might think that the car above, flying the Confederate battle flag, confirms it.  It doesn't.  I've learned that the flag (you'll see a few at every race) says very little about the driver's actual attitude toward the African-Americans he races against.  Often enough, the message that the flag sends and what happens at the track are completely contradictory.

 

 

All of the photos that are a part of Democracy of Speed were shot on black and white film.  I'm going to guess, however, that I'll include two or three images from these last rolls of Kodachrome (after I've converted the images to black and white in Photoshop).

 

 

It had been several years since I'd last shot Kodachrome.  I'd forgotten about the challenges and pleasures of using such a slow film.  The ability to use slow shutter speeds, without resorting to filters, was definitely one of the pleasures.  I like the results.

 

 

I'm also a fan of the shallow depth of field that ISOs of 25 and 64 allowed me to get, even in daylight.

 

 

Finally, I like the way that Kodachrome captured the dull, gray weather of the first day of racing.

Looking over my slides last week, after they'd been shipped back from Dwayne's, I wondered whether I should have been shooting with Kodachrome all along.  Probably not.  But it's easy to feel nostalgia for a film that produced such beautiful results and is now gone forever.

 

 

You can see the black and white photos that my trusty Rolleiflex and I made at the SBRA Finals in 2009 and 2010, here and here.

Pro Mods Invade Virginia: The ADRL's Speedtech U.S. Drags III @ Virginia Motorsports Park, 21-22 May 2010

The last time that I wrote about the ADRL, I called it the hottest thing in drag racing.  Over the last several years, the ADRL [American Drag Racing League] has seemingly come out of nowhere to stage races that rival the older and wealthier National Hot Rod Association.  The ADRL has packed the grandstands with just as many fans (sometimes more).  And the action on the race track has just as entertaining.

Deep-pocket sponsorship from the Army National Guard made it all possible.  After the end of last season, however, the Guard withdrew from the ADRL and other motorsports ventures.  That raised the question:  Can the ADRL survive?

The answer:  You bet it can.

Pro Nitrous class winner Shannon Jenkins performs a burnout during Friday night's qualifying.  (All photos copyright John Edwin Mason, 2010.  Click directly on any of the images to see larger versions.)

I was at this weekend's race -- the Speedtech U.S. Drags III -- to cover the event for Drag Racing Online [DRO].  The crowds were strong, especially for Saturday's eliminations, the speeds were amazing, records were set, and the competition was fierce.  You'll be able to read all about it at DRO.

Pro Nitrous racer Bob Rahaim performs a burnout just prior to crashing during a qualifying run.  The car's safety equipment did its job, and he walked away unharmed.

I've been a motorsports fan all my life, but didn't get hooked on drag racing until about a decade ago.  A big part of my interest has to do with the chance to make interesting photos.  I like what a slow shutter speed can do to the look of the cars and the feel of the track.  It's an especially nice effect at night.

Pro Nitrous racer Todd Howard performs a burnout.

That slow shutter can also produce beautiful effects during the day.  And, yes, tire smoke is an irresistible design element.

Pro Nitrous racer Todd Howard blasts away from the starting line.

But my goal isn't simply to produce beautiful pictures.  I also want to tell the story of the race and that means, among other things, capturing the speed and power of the cars.  I think the photo above does just that.

Pro Extreme racer Frankie Taylor leaves the starting line in a hurry.

Speed and power is what drag racing's all about, after all.  Frankie Taylor certainly had plenty of both.  He set a new Pro Extreme elapsed time record for the eighth-mile of 3.607 seconds.  That's a staggering number and seems to defy the laws of physics.  Taylor covered the eighth-mile course about the same time that it will take you to read this sentence, quickly.  His top speed was 208.71 miles per hour.  On the same track, a very fast and very expensive street car -- say, a Ferrari or a Corvette -- would take more than twice a long and go less than half as fast.

Extreme 10.5 racer Candyce Marsh performs a burnout during qualifying.

Another thing that I like about drag racing is the diversity of the participants.  Women, blacks, Latinos, and Asians are all part of the mix.  It's been this way from the sports earliest days, in the '40s and '50s.  The white guys who opened the first tracks and started the first sanctioning body (the NHRA) rarely told women and members of minority groups to go away.  Instead, they welcomed them.  Drag racing really is the Democracy of Speed, as I've written about many times.

Candyce March was one of several women drivers and motorcycle racers at the race.  She qualified 13th, in the Extreme 10.5 class, but missed eliminations due to a mechanical failure.

Pro Nitrous racers Isaias Rojas, near lane, and Rickie Smith, far lane, perform burnouts, prior to an elimination round.

Isaias Rojas proudly flew the Puerto Rican flag.

Extreme Pro Stock racer Bert Jackson performs a burnout.

Like Marsh, Jackson is an African American.  He just missed qualifying in the top half of the field.

Pro Nitrous driver Dan Stevenson performs a burnout during Friday night qualifying.

I'll end with another smoky, nighttime burnout.  I can't resist these shots.  A blazing car in foreground, with the packed grandstands and the purple night sky in the background.  It's scenes like these that brought all those thousands of people to the track.