Klemantaski: Master Motorsports Photographer

by Paul Parker, Klemantaski Collection (Photographer)

See the golden age of racing through hundreds of famed motorsports photographer Louis Klemantaski's greatest images, including many that have never been previously published. The next best thing to attending a race in person is the opportunity to relive it through high-quality photography. Most images merely document the event--rare are those photographs that  capture  the event. These are the photos that fans turn to again and again.  Louis Klemantaski  inserted himself into the action - whether that meant standing just off-course in a corner, roaming the paddock and infield, or riding shotgun in a Mille Miglia race car. In the process, he captured some of the most iconic images in motorsports, preserving these exciting events for all time. Louis Klemantaski is one of history's greatest motorsports photographers. The immediacy and excitement his images evoke are unsurpassed. He worked during what is often considered racing's golden era, that period immediately just prior to WWII through the early 1970s when the sport was still the province of passion and daring, before huge budgets and massive sponsorship forever changed its tenor. Klemantaski's subjects spanned road racing, Grand Prix, and F1 competition. Master Motorsports Photographer  is the only book in print devoted to the photographer's full body of work. Hundreds of the best Klemantaski images have been collected to provide the only opportunity to own and enjoy his key work in a single volume. No racing or photography fan will want to miss this book!

272 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2014

Reviews

[AmyKatherine1974 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I obviously love to read- or I be here on GoodReads. But what you might not know is that I love books themselves. Yes, I am talking about those bound collections of paper with writings in them. I can’t tell you how much I miss bricks and mortar bookstores (the nearest one to me is in the next county- 27 miles away or so) because I would often just go to wander around and look at the books on those occasions that I didn’t have anything else to do. If I had a huge house- I would devote a whole room to being a library, but alas I don’t have a house like that so I have a book case. A very crammed full book case at that, which is one of the reasons I invested in an e-reader. I now only keep physical copies of books I absolutely love as it’s all I have room for now. Most of those books are works of fiction with a small motorsports section that is crammed so tight I have had to weed through it multiple times. I think I might fudge this one and put it in my photography section so I don’t have to weed out any more of my beloved motorsports books.

Klemantaski: Master Motorsports Photographer by Paul Parker has got to be one of the most gorgeous books I have seen in a long time. It’s a book of motorsports photographs detailing what is often called racing’s “golden era” – pre-WWII through the early 1970s. But first let me give you a little background on who Louis Klemantaski is before we get into this beautiful book.

Klemantaski is often credited with inventing modern motorsports photography. He started out with a young boy with a passion for driving in Britain and was said to have started driving jeep prototypes at the tender age of six. At age ten he received his first camera and would take pictures at his cousin’s tennis and cricket matches. He combined his passion for motorsports (he was a driver for several years before a leg injury prohibited from being able to compete any more but it didn’t stop him from going to races) with his love of photography. Klemantaski often inserted himself right into the action at the track- often standing just off-course or roaming the paddock (infield) to get some of the most incredible images of a time as he pushed the boundaries of film speed (yes FILM) get the photos that captured an era of motorsports. Many of these photos that are collected in this book!

The book itself is a hearty 12 x 9.75 inch 272 page book- it’s heavy- trust me as someone who has been lugging it around for a week. There are a total of 357 photos from the Klemantaski collection grace the pages, a majority of which are black and white- but there are some in color.

[Jose · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Treasure trove of Beautiful Period photography featuring black and white and color when racing was racing,From the obscure to the mainstream of cars and race car drivers,F1,F2 and Sportscars in the heydays before ugly styling and political correctness took over.(Nowadays)You can almost smell the exotic blends of Fuels then used and the burnt rubber.My personal favorites are Cunningham and His cars,Zora Duntov,The Aston Martin and Lagonda cars,Only thing I do not like was that Klem went on a "Allowed" Tour of The Soviet Union by car,(UGH).I wish there would have been more racing Corvettes featured,but it encompasses many decades well into the 60s,Le Mans,Targa,Monza among other great tracks are covered.A Petrolhead's Pictorial Plethora.

[Damage98 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some amazing photos, plenty I've never seen. Great coffee table book!