John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

We the People: Looking at the Way We Live Now

I'm happy to announce that several of my photographs are included in We The People, an exhibition of documentary and portrait photography at the University of Virginia's Arthur J. Morris Law Library that will be on view until June 2018. The exhibit showcases the work of 15 photographers who explore... Read more →

Bunny Burkett and the 48th Annual Easter Sunday Funny Car Show, Eastside Speedway

For the last decade or so -- the amount of time that I've been documenting the quirkier ins and outs of American car culture -- Easter Sundays have found me impaled on the horns of a dilemma. (Ouch! is right.) Do I go to church to praise the Risen Lord... Read more →

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 →