The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts
Change indeed. Bernard Asset’s art. McLaren at Eau Rouge on the Spa circuit. F1 photography would never be the same again. Copyright Bernard Asset. All rights reserved.
By Graham Gauld
From the VeloceToday archives June 2013
At a recent race meeting I met up with an old friend of over 25 years, the famed French Formula 1 photographer Bernard Asset. You may not have heard of him, but he completely changed the style of motor racing photography back in the 1970s.
After a generation had passed, Allen and Carole were suddenly selling the old prints from 1955 to 1965. Photo by Lisa K. Kuhn
Read Part 1 Though my shooting days of sports car racing were over I would keep the negatives; no photographer would ever get rid of his work. I secured an empty Kodak 250 sheet 8×10 Polycontrast III RC F Glossy Paper Box to store the negatives in. I hermetically sealed the box and put it in a secure dry-walled cabinet in my garage for storage. They did not see the glare of an enlarger bulb for the next 35 years.
Story by Allen R. Kuhn
It was on September 20, 1998, that Carole and I went to a vintage sports car race in Tustin, California. This was the first time we had seen sports cars turn their wheels in earnest. I took some 8×10 prints along just in case we saw some of the same cars again. Sure enough, we saw some. I actually (cough, cough) gave a few guys prints. (I always get choked up when I use the “G” word, GAVE). Gave is a NO, NO, Dan Gurney once told me. Carole saw someone who had a booth about a sports car magazine, Vintage Race Car Journal . She wanted me to go and show him my photos. That’s where I met Casey Annis.
Allen Kuhn with his trusty Canon 35 mm with a 135mm telephoto lens. He also used a 2 ¼ Rolleicord that was mostly for Ektachrome color film. “Color film made up just 5 % of my total images (about 300 images). I used it mostly for pit shots. The Canon was the work horse.”
West Coast photographer Allen R. Kuhn spent his youth photographing models, buzzing around Southern California in an Abarth Zagato, became a noted race photographer, found a career at Hughes Aircraft, married the girl of his dreams…and that was just the beginning.
Story and photos by Allen R. Kuhn
Unlike many car enthusiasts, my interest in sports cars was not influenced by my parents. Their style in cars was a 1928 Ford that they drove to Yosemite National Park for their honeymoon. They did, however, support my photo interests by naming me the ‘Official Family Photographer.’ In 1954, when I was 16, I found a copy of Argosy magazine (a men’s magazine of the day) with an article about Sebring. It had a fantastic two-page spread on Juan Manuel Fangio driving a Lancia D24, taken at dusk. It was an extreme pan shot. You could almost feel the sensation of speed with the blurred background and sharp looking car. That’s the style I wanted to achieve. [Read more…] about A Photographer’s Life: Cars and Dolls
By the staff of Giorgio Nada Editore
When the Mille Miglia emerged from the ashes of the Second World War in the June of 1947, among the crowds thronging Brescia’s Piazza della Vittoria in those early summer days was a young man with a camera slung around his neck, absorbed in capturing faces, cars and views with his Leica. [Read more…] about Alberto Sorlini: Visual Poet of the Mille Miglia
Change indeed. Bernard Asset's art. McLaren at Eau Rouge on the Spa circuit. F1 photography would never be the same again. Copyright Bernard Asset. All rights reserved.
By Graham Gauld
At a recent race meeting I met up with an old friend of over 25 years, the famed French Formula 1 photographer Bernard Asset. You may not have heard of him, but he completely changed the style of motor racing photography back in the 1970s.
Bernard Asset today. Photo by Graham Gauld.
Born in 1955 Bernard Asset was brought up in Paris; his father was a keen and talented amateur photographer. From the age of 14 young Asset wanted to be a photographer, and as a young teenager at the photography school the teacher asked him what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to be a sports photographer and cover the Olympics. The teacher told him to forget it as they were training commercial photographers. the Olympics, including the 1992 Summer and Winter Olympics at Barcelona and Albertville. “You know, ski photography is very similar to photographing Formula 1,” he remarks. [Read more…] about Bernard Asset: The Man Who Changed the Pictures