"Closer Still" Photo Gallery Debuts at Revs
As the museum prepares to reopen to the public on October 1, we are excited to share our new exhibition, “Closer Still”, featuring the photographic works of Jesse Alexander who documented sports car racing from the 1950s through the 1990s. The gallery is an important step forward in Revs’ unending pursuit to make archaeological automotive assets more available to the public.
Jesse Alexander had the privilege of documenting what many historians and enthusiasts consider racing’s golden age, and coincidentally it is a period of the automotive world that the automobile and archives collection of Revs largely covers. Throughout his career, he was published in countless publications, shown in art galleries across the world but now, his collection consisting of thousands of negatives, prints and ephemera has landed at Revs. The collection has been sorted, scanned and is currently being archived at the Revs Archives and Research Center (Revs ARC) in Fort Myers.
Jesse Alexander’s style is one that is difficult to replicate in the modern era of motorsports, owing largely to the radical change in subjects. Oil soaked drivers emerging from open top sportscars with open face helmets is a thing of the past, obscuring some of the provocative sense of danger associated with motorsports of the period. Museum guests can see photos of this bygone era in addition to letters from driver Stirling Moss, who Jesse had a close relationship with. Jesse kept close relationships with many drivers on the Formula One and sports car racing grid, leading to him getting extraordinarily close in the pits and victory lane which created an incredibly intimate feeling in many of his photos. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that Jesse also frequently manipulated his subjects in the photos, calling out their names to get their attention causing them to look directly down the lens for the photo.
“Jesse Alexander was truly a master of his craft, especially through the intimacy he creates between these incredible figures from motorsports history and us, the viewer” said Lauren Goodman, Associate Curator of Exhibitions.
Alexander first ventured into motorsports photography when he shot the 1953 Carrera Panamericana. The rally snaked through Mexico, going border-to-border, south to north. The race featured both big body American sedans, similar to Briggs Cunningham’s Cadillac Series 61 competing alongside small European sports cars including Porsche’s 550 coupe.
One of Alexander’s most striking images, and the featured image of the gallery is a capture of Jim Clark after winning his first Formula One race at the 1962 Belgian Grand Prix. Clark looks exhausted, covered in grime from hours on track, he stares into the camera and the viewers soul expressionless.
“These photographs really put a human face to the drivers that brought these cars to life in the past, he was able to capture the vulnerability in a way that not many other photographers did” said Goodman.
The new space takes advantage of the area our archives used to occupy to the right of the three of a kind display. It is one of the two new spaces that will be opening this season here at Revs, with our ACTIVE MATTER Lab set to open later this year.
