A curated collection of famed motorsports photographer Louis Klemantaski’s greatest images.

 

For motorsports enthusiasts, the next best thing to attending a race in person is the opportunity to live it vicariously through high-quality photography. As with all sports photography, there are images that simply document the event and then there are those much rarer images that truly capture the heart and soul of what it was like to be there. The latter are the photos that fans turn to again and again, marveling at the moments caught in time and imagining what it must have been like to experience those events firsthand.

 

Louis Klemantaski is widely acknowledged as one of history’s greatest motorsports photographers for the immediacy and context his images bring to life. He worked during what is often considered racing’s golden era, the period from the end of WWII through the early 1970s when the sport was still the embodiment of passion and daring—the years before huge budgets and massive sponsorship would forever change its tenor. Klemantaski inserted himself in the action to the greatest degree possible, whether that meant standing just off-course in a corner, roaming the pits and infield, or riding shotgun in Mille Miglia race cars. In the process, he caught some of the most iconic images in motorsports. He focused on road racing, Grand Prix, and F1 competition in his shooting from 1936 to 1974.