John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Grey Villet, Interracial Love, and Drag Racing, 1965

Update: 30 January 2012. I've just seen a small but superb exhibition of Grey Villet's photos at the International Center of Photography, in New York. It includes the photo directly below and about 20 others that he made while working on the story about interracial love for Life magazine. I... Read more →

Motor Sports & 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,... Read more →

How to Shoot Like an Historian

An historian with a camera? That's a bit like a fish with a bicycle, isn't it? After all, a camera isn't a quill, a pencil, or a microfiche reader. It's not a computer or even an audio recorder. It isn't, that is, a tool of the historical trade. Don't get... Read more →

The Last Rolls of Kodachrome & the SBRA Drag Racing Finals

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... Read more →

Car Culture, Continued: The SBRA Bracket Finals, 2010, at Eastside Speedway

Driving over the Blue Ridge Mountains to Eastside Speedway, after having been away for several months, feels like going home -- in an odd sort of way. My attachment to the place has nothing to do with family (although I've made a lot of friends there, over the last few... Read more →

SBRA Bracket Finals, Eastside Speedway: Three Days at the Races

Hundreds of drag racers (and their families and friends) turned out for the Southern Bracket Racing Association's championship finals at Eastside Speedway,in Waynesboro, Virginia, on 2 to 4 October. This annual event draws the best racers from six small, grassroots dragstrips in Virginia and Maryland. Tracks like these, and the... Read more →

Drag Racing, The Democracy of Speed

Drag racers don't use the word "diversity." Most are more interested in how fast a car goes than in the color of the driver's skin or whether it’s a man or a woman behind the wheel. But the fact remains that drag racing is, by far, the most racially diverse... Read more →