This Coffee-Table Book Is a Time Machine to the Golden Age of Motorsport
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Dave Friedman’s book Through My Eyes is good for 658,000 of them. That’s not including the text, captions, and other priceless ephemera that accompany his 658 photographs documenting what is probably the most exciting period in American motorsport.
An award-winning still photographer, Friedman is no stranger to those who follow the early days of West-Coast racing. The so-called Golden Years—from 1958 to 1965—are when unrepeatable history was made by some of the world’s most famous drivers and their iconic machines, the latter worth fortunes today but which were expendable tools in an era when racing was akin to the Wild West, fueled by gasoline. Those who were there “in the day” would have seen Friedman in action; those of us just a little—or a lot—younger can put the puzzle pieces together through his pictures to recreate the scene, a scene with characters and cars that will never be replicated.
Dave Friedman has had a camera in his hands longer than many people have been alive. He has, for more than 65 years, documented not just the achievements of the most notable names in motorsport, but celebrities, the cinema, and even classical ballet. But racing is in his blood, and has inspired the images populating the 364 pages of this book. The tome is a time machine that takes the reader back to see the cars, drivers, teams, and venues of the era, captured on 35 mm black-and-white film and the occasional color photo, reproduced with all the patina and romance that only pictures from the period can convey.
The book is a veritable Who’s Who of racing talent: Bob Bondurant (who contributed a thoughtful Forward right before his passing in 2021), Jack Brabham, AJ Foyt, Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, Graham and Phil Hill, Dave MacDonald, Stirling Moss, Roger Penske, the Rodriguez brothers, Carroll Shelby, and John Surtees are among Friedman’s subjects. As are the various backdrops that put the day’s racing in context, including pit crews, spectators, trackside details, and parking lots with street cars that date-stamp every photo that shows them. For example, Friedman’s casual shot of a 1962 Chevrolet Impala with an open trunk filled with a mountain of ice cubes and beer—for the hard-working race team—captures the spirit of the day as well as any podium-victory photo can.
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Anyone with even a passing interest in sports-car racing of the 1950s and ‘60s can spend hours perusing this photo “scrapbook,” which is carefully annotated with detailed (and occasionally humorous) captions. Some images will be universally recognized by serious followers of racing. But the real thrill is studying the majority of never-before-published images that, taken together, offer a master class in motorsport history. Following an Introduction, the book is chronologically arranged by event, its 22 chapters beginning with the 1958 L.A. Times Grand Prix and concluding with the same L.A. Times–sponsored event in 1965.
This substantial volume is clearly a labor of love. The text is as authentic and candid as the photos, and any grammatical imperfections are—in a world of antiseptic AI-cloned verbiage—a welcome respite, and a reminder that documenting history is a human endeavor, rough edges and all.
Printed in the United States on thick gloss stock and hard-bound in navy blue, Through My Eyes is published by Original Venice Crew, builders of the real continuation 1965 Shelby G.T.350 R-models. With their friend Dave Friedman, Jim Marietta and his colleagues at OVC have produced two editions. The Signed Edition is limited to 800 copies, priced at $295. Serious collectors will want the Deluxe Special Signed Edition, priced at $495. Limited to 200 copies, each comes in a custom-designed slipcase and is signed and numbered by the author. Also part of the latter package are six Friedman photographs of racing legends in an OVC-designed envelope.
Click here for more racing images from photographer Dave Friedman’s book Through My Eyes.
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