Robb Report Collectibles: Emotion on Emulsion: The Photography of Jesse Alexander
02/02/2004
Arguments about photography’s qualifications as an art form have raged since images were first captured through a lens and preserved on emulsion. While the medium itself may or may not be art, depending on whose opinions you choose to accept, a few of its practitioners have justly been hailed as artists. Among them, a handful have worked their magic in the world of automobiles. Perhaps the best of them is Jesse Alexander.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
Though this moody portrait from 1962 might suggest otherwise, Jim Clark had just
won his first Formula One race. (Click image to enlarge)Anyone who followed the world of motorsports in the 1950s and 1960s is sure to be familiar with Alexander’s work. In a time before television had discovered racing, his images and words brought European races to life in the pages of Car and Driver’s precursor, Sports Cars Illustrated. Alexander made it possible for American enthusiasts to vicariously enjoy the nomadic life of the racing world and see the greatest drivers and machines in action, whether on the high banks of Monza, Italy, the “green hell” of the long, twisting Nürburgring, or the tight confines of the street circuit at Monaco.
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Juan Manuel Fangio at a practice session before the 1955 Italian Grand Prix. He
won two of his five World Championships with Mercedes-Benz. (Click image to enlarge)But
Alexander’s photography went beyond mere reportage, which may well explain why
prints of his images from those golden days are sought by collectors of great
photography, some of whom care little for motor racing. He did not concentrate
solely on the action, as others tend to do; instead, through his sensitive
candid portraits, he introduced us to the people of motorsport—drivers,
mechanics, spectators, and even other photographers who happened to be in his
field of vision.
There is, for example, something haunting about the
expression Alexander captured on the late Jim Clark’s face after the 1962
Belgian Grand Prix, his first Formula One victory. Ironically, the milestone win came on a circuit Clark hated; two years before, a pair of
drivers, one his teammate and the other a close friend, were killed in separate
accidents there. Even without knowing that, it is possible to look at the
photograph and see more than the normal relief a driver might feel after a hard
race is over.
Conversely, Phil Hill’s face, as he holds the trophy awarded to
him for winning the 1960 Italian Grand Prix, shows a mixture of elation and
fatigue untainted by tragedy, while a photograph of Juan Manuel Fangio preparing
to take a practice run in his Mercedes-Benz at the same track five years earlier
records the intense concentration that helped make the Argentinian a five-time
Formula One World Champion. All around him, mechanics are performing their
tasks, and to his left, Mercedes team manager Alfred Neubauer seems to be trying
to get Fangio’s attention with his signal flag, yet the driver himself appears
to have already set his mind to the challenges of the car and course, and to be
oblivious to everything else.
To look at these photos, and others like them,
is to understand why Reeves Callaway, best known for his ultrahigh-performance,
turbocharged Callaway Corvettes but an avid collector of Alexander’s work in
private life, says: “I think Jesse’s work falls somewhere between Paul Caponigro
and Yousef Karsh—Caponigro because of the high art of his images, and Karsh
because of the portraiture.”
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Alain Prost’s Ferrari leaves its garage at
the 1991 Canadian Grand Prix in this
evocative color image.
(Click image to enlarge) This is more than praise for a friend. “I came to Jesse’s photography from two different vantage points,” Callaway says. “First, I was attracted as a motorsports enthusiast, but I was also trained as a classical black-and-white photographer with a fine arts degree, so when I saw his work, and the Ansel Adams level of execution, I said, ‘this is my guy.’ His images push all the right buttons for me.”
The career that would result in countless magazine articles, two books
(Driven and 40 Years of Motorsports Photography; a third, Porsche Memories is in
preparation for release next Christmas), and a thriving business in
museum-quality prints, began simply. Alexander was drawn into the nascent
sportscar scene of the early 1950s and, after a trip to the 1953 Pan American
Road in Mexico and exposure to British car magazines, decided to pull up stakes
and move to Europe, the better to indulge his love of racing.
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Phil Hill celebrates his first Formula One victory at Monza, Italy. One year
later, he would be crowned World Champion at the same track. (Click image to enlarge)Armed with
nothing more than a 35mm Leica camera “with a couple of lenses” and, later, a
medium-format Rolleiflex, the self-taught photographer quickly made a name
for himself as an exceptionally able reporter. Over the next decade, recognition
of his artistry grew as well, and continues to this day.
A selection of
Alexander’s best black-and-white and color images is available to collectors
through the Peter Fetterman Galleries in Santa Monica, Calif.; New York City;
Birmingham, Michigan; Dallas; and London.
Peter Fetterman Gallery
www.peterfetterman.com