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Richard S. Cunanan
February 28, 2018     |    

Road To The Past

MB&F’s Images from Car Racing’s Beginnings

MB&F has set a portion of their beloved M.A.D. Gallery towards the exhibit of six selected photographs showing that the beginnings of the age of automobile racing were not only more elegant than you might have thought, but that they were just as exciting. The pioneers of this sport were working without a preestablished game plan, and the world was a very exciting place.

For this selection, MB&F joined hands with the duo of Daniel Berque and Serge Brison. This Belgian team works to restore rare photographs from the earliest days of motorsport.

In “For The Thrill Of Speed” MB&F has curated six pictures of race days gone by. They show the days of the age of car racing ranging from 1925 to 1963. Much of the original collection is the work of a man named René Pari, who had a knack for capturing the immediacy and thrill of a moment on the track. Berque & Brison acquired his photographic negatives and restored them, sometimes requiring weeks to work from a broken glass negative plate. The six images chosen are being released in a limited series of 21 prints.

The six photos each have their own particular sensation. For example, Achille Varzi, Spa 1947 by René Pari captures the drama of a man just about to start on a race. The scene is taut, and he crowd looks on in a moment frozen both by the photographer’s art and by the action just about to unfold.

Meanwhile, On the Road to Victory – Tour de France 1956 catches a moment between two cars on the road. Apparently Pari got this shot by leaning out of a press car with a twin-lens Rolleiflex camera. He was photographing the famed drivers Alfonso de Portago and Edmund Nelson, who won first that year.

And yet there was other drama as well. Italy’s Count Innocente Biaggio is shown digging his race car out of a sand pit, while wearing his dapper light grey Alpaca suit and silk shirt. You have to applaud both his sartorial instincts and his commitment to the race. The photo is entitled Such is Life in Racing – Le Mans 1954.

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