OTHER SPORTS
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Viskari Wins Boston Marathon, 1956
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Start at Belmont, 1957
Start at Belmont, 1957
Close Close Read MoreThe following excerpt is from Masters of Contemporary Photography Zimmerman & Kauffman Photographing Sports.
In the 1960′s sequence cameras were becoming increasingly popular. The most extreme version of the type was the Hulcher, which could be loaded with 100-foot rolls of 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 film, color or black and white. Able to accommodate long lenses, the Hulcher was a short step away from being a precision motion picture camera. With the advent of the sequence cameras like the Hulcher those milliseconds impossible to grab by even the fastest eye were, at last, captured. Tamed also were those friendly adversaries of sports photography-anticipation and luck.
Like Mark Kauffman, Zimmerman also saw the magic of extreme motion in racing. But while Kauffman played for contrast, the tensions between the bucolic and the frenzied, Zimmerman turned the full force of his attack upon the primary surge as the horses burst out of the starting gate when the jockeys launch that first push for the rail that often determines the race. At the Belmont racetrack in New York, “I went to the infield because the sun was right and you can get closer to the horses. I stood on a ladder and the starter even let us build a boom so we could bring the cameras nearer to the animals. The most memorable thing is the noise. Good Lord, you can’t believe the thunder of those hooves and the shouting of the jockeys.”
The only picture Zimmerman wanted was of that instant at the start of the race, and only a sequence could assure him of it. As the film whirred through the camera, he caught a flying phalanx of horseflesh screaming from the gate compacted as neatly as a fanned deck of cards.
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Horse Racing, 1957
