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The Art of Black and White
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Jere Alhadeff mastered it and will forever be recognized as one of the best...
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By Dave Wallace |
EDITOR'S NOTE: What follows is Dave Wallace's expanded version of a story that appeared in Hot Rod Nostalgia's print "magalog" and Web site. These B&W images are among the hundreds of Jere Alhadeff custom prints available exclusively from www.hotrodnostalgia.com. Because my dad's publicity duties for San Fernando Drag Strip in the 1950s and '60s included action photography, black-and-white pictures have been spread across my dining-room tables for 40 years. Indeed, one of the first racing smells I remember is not nitromethane, nor methanol (I started attending when the Fuel Ban was still in effect at 'Fernando); it's the tube of stinky pink goop that came with each package of Polaroid film.
Dave Senior used a Polaroid for three reasons: It was the only camera owned by the San Fernando Airport and Drag Strip Corporation; Dad had neither the time nor the darkroom in which to process negative film; and his pictures had to be mailed special delivery, along with his typewritten race report, by 10:00 Sunday night to make Drag News' inflexible Monday deadline. (The paper printed each Tuesday morning.) When I was 10 or 11, he'd let me stand beside him on the starting line and "fix" the images that would magically exit his camera and develop before our eyes. (If you failed to smear each Polaroid picture with goop, the image would streak or fade away.) In spite of his equipment handicap, Dad perfected his action photography to the point where hundreds of his Polaroids were published -- at least one of which was enlarged into a full-cover shot. Drag News and National Dragster were joined by several other weekly tabloids in the early and mid-Sixties, fueling the Golden Age of drag-racing journalism. Publishers needed lots of words and action photos to fill all those B & W pages every week. Ironically, editors did not ordinarily pay their hard-working contributors; rather, individual drag strips were expected to provide stories and pictures to the newspapers, in exchange for "free" national publicity. Longtime Drag News owner Doris Herbert is the person most responsible for instituting this publisher-friendly system, which endures to this day at National Dragster and some other publications. (The only occasions I remember Doris calling my house were those rare Tuesdays when her post office had failed to deliver a bulging results package for San Fernando or, later, Lions or OCIR.) Consequently, anyone with a camera and a darkroom stood a decent chance of talking his way out to the starting line at any strip in the country. If you actually showed up every single week, and could print and deliver a half-dozen in-focus eight-by-tens to the drag rags by Monday morning, you might even become the official track photographer -- and receive a coveted jacket confirming this enviable position. A fortunate few would be paid enough by the promoter to offset the costs of film, lunch and darkroom chemicals. If you were extremely lucky, you'd sell an occasional print to a racer or, even better, to a manufacturer or advertising agency that needed a "hero" photo for an ad.
Alas, decades later, the whereabouts of these wonderful negatives are largely unknown. Many of the pioneer photographers grew weary of the weekly 24-hour grind and vanished as suddenly as they'd appeared. Others hung around for a few seasons before blending back into the bleachers, then fading away. Some actually figured out how to make fulltime careers out of drag-racing photojournalism, at least temporarily, only to ultimately abandon the sport for more-family-oriented weekends or occupations with shorter hours and longer dollars. Even among the handful of professionals who continue to shoot the drags, few have been able to preserve and/or effectively organize their thousands of old negatives. Divorces, relocations and natural disasters have all taken their toll on these fragile strips of film.
A rare exception to the above scenarios is a former Lions, Irwindale and Orange County track-photographer named Jere Alhadeff. When I conceived the Hot Rod Nostalgia "magalog" in 1994, I'd hoped to offer the handmade prints of many photographers. Not until preparing the second edition did, however, did I finally locate someone who was ready, willing and able to do so. From his approximately 12,000 individual B&W negatives, Jere (pronounced "JAIR") agreed to share several hundred classic images suitable for enlarging all the way up to 16x20-inch, pearl-finished posters. Happily, it turns out that nostalgia lovers and serious collectors in Europe, Australia and North America share my enthusiasm for and appreciation of a photograph that is individually printed by the very person who squeezed the trigger three decades earlier. That's why eight full pages of the print magalog are devoted to "Photos By Jere".
Alhadeff became acquainted with photography accidentally, while writing for his high-school newspaper in the early Sixties. "I joined the staff mainly to hang out with all the girls who worked on the paper," he recalled. "The instructor finally gave me a camera to keep me out of the room, so the girls could get the work done." After graduating in 1964, Alhadeff missed the publishing experience, and determined to combine his passions for photography and drag racing. A friend put him in touch with the publisher of Hot Rod Parts Illustrated, who arranged for a one-time trial at Lions Drag Strip. Jere's only camera was a twin-lens Yashica with a viewfinder -- through which the subjects appeared to be moving backwards, making it extremely difficult to follow any action. Nonetheless, the publisher was pleased with the results, and continued arranging credentials at Lions and elsewhere in exchange for Jere's exposed film. In 1965 or '66, Alhadeff was offered the prestigious track-photographer's position by Lions PR man Ralph Guldahl. He was paid $35 a week for delivering five B&W prints each to Drag News and National Dragster by Monday night. "Ron Lahr had just started, too," Jere recalled. "We became friends, helping each other. Lahr is an extremely gifted photographer. I always felt like I had to really work to keep up with him. He has a natural feel for what to do; I was the one going to school, going for a degree in photography, trying to learn tricks. We always had the ability to criticize each other, and take criticism, and make fun of each other, and congratulate each other. I still have that approach to photography: When I look at a picture, I first look at it as a photograph, and how much I like it -- then I think about who took it. It doesnt matter who took it; I can congratulate the photographer.
"Lahr had a darkroom in his house, so we would shoot Lions every Saturday night, then go back to his house, develop film late that night, then go to Irwindale Sunday, come back, and I'd print until the wee hours at his place. Then I'd drive home, so I could go to school the next morning. On Monday evening, I'd drive to L.A. and deliver the pictures. I used that money from Lions to buy my own darkroom equipment. Later on, in '67 or so, National Dragster paid $15 to the winner of its Photo-of-the-Week contest. In 10 or 12 weeks, I won it three or four times. My rent at the time was $37.50, so winning a contest paid almost two weeks' rent." Alhadeff prides himself as much on the printing as the picture-taking. Though perhaps no one would complain about receiving a quality "machine" print made from one of his negatives, Jere insists on hand-producing each photograph in his personal darkroom, just as he has since the '60s. "That's the part of it I really enjoy", he explained. "It's therapeutic. It brings back memories. That was the problem I had at first: I'd spend hours and hours going through negatives, reminiscing."
Once he brings the desired effect to photographic paper, Jere writes down the formula utilized: enlarger lens; amount of magnification; contrast; grade of paper; exposure time; developer temperature; dodging and burning of light in specific areas of the image. Because of the handwork involved, prints may vary slightly. "I try to make eight of the same when I print", he adds, "and I won't sell the last one, to make sure that any new ones are cropped and exposed the same. I want them all to look the best". "I think the whole thing with black and white is that a photograph is not necessarily what was, or what is, there; it's what you saw. In the darkroom, you can change things, darkening and lightening and cropping, so you can make it the way you saw it, rather than the way it actually was. I really delight in printing them, because you have so much creative control. "I think that's why I never got much into color, because that [processing] was always done by someone else; you didn't have the control you have over black and white. The mood can vary the result, like any type of process not machine-done. Besides which, when I was doing it for the papers and magazines, almost all of the pages were black and white, plus the film was cheaper. If you bought color film, it cost more to buy and more to get processed, and there wasn't much of a market." Now 56, Alhadeff rarely breaks out his cameras anymore. When he does shoot a session of Goodguys nostalgia qualifying or a round of Volkswagen racing, every roll of film confirms that this veteran photographer is still capable of conceptualizing and capturing action like few others in the history of the medium. Jere admittedly misses the challenge of shooting modern pro cars, but finds it difficult, if not impossible, to secure NHRA photo credentials -- or even a ticket to shoot from the stands. NHRA's loss is definitely Hot Rod Nostalgia's gain. Were Alhadeff still out there on the pro circuit -- banging elbows with wannabe photographers and corporate publicity hacks equipped with fully automatic cameras -- he'd probably be too busy to produce the prints that appear in HRN's print magalog and Web site. Each time he closes that darkroom door, Jere Alhadeff contributes to an art form that he helped create in the 1960s, and continues to refine in the 21st century.
For the current print edition of Hot Rod Nostalgia's magalog, send $5 to |
