“I went specifically to study with him, having read his book The Making of the English Working Class,” Horenstein tells me by phone from his home in Boston. A few years later, when his interest shifted from history to photography, Thompson would still be as influential on Horenstein’s work as the esteemed photographers he studied at the Rhode Island School of Design—such as Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, and Minor. White. “I soon realized that the life of a historian was quite boring, whereas the life of a photographer was not,” Horenstein says with a laugh. “But what Thompson taught me, I tried to bring to my photography. I sought out working people whose voices usually didn’t get out there.” I soon realized that the life of a historian was quite boring, while the life of a photographer was not Since then, Horenstein has amassed a vast archive of images of mostly “ordinary” people and has published several photo albums about American working-class pursuits such as baseball, horse racing and country music. Now comes Speedway 1972, an early series of evocative black-and-white portraits taken at auto racing events at tracks in Seekonk, Massachusetts, and Thompson, Connecticut. “What draws me is the community,” he says, citing his brother-in-law, a speedway driver, as his initial conduit to this popular culture of beat-up cars and reckless speed. Photo: Henry Horenstein “I was still in high school and looking for an opportunity,” he writes in his brief introduction. “There had to be good photos for a historian-with-a-camera-in-training.” The passage of time has imbued his portraits with an even deeper aura of authenticity, largely because Horenstein’s ordinary people—blue-collar, white, small-town—come from an era when classic American workwear was practical rather than fashionable. Many of the men wear stained T-shirts, shapeless work trousers and heavy boots, while the young prefer denim and plaid, their unruly hairstyles testifying to the long-standing legacy of the 60s hippies. Teenage couples and youth groups attest to the fact that motor racing provided a family night out in country communities where the best drivers were often local heroes. Although the series is characterized by images of battered cars and drivers posing proudly, Horenstein draws his gaze mostly on the players, framing his subjects in total darkness or with the silhouettes of makeshift buildings and rows of half-empty wooden benches. . Their presence is highly dramatic, even if many look gassy and awkward in front of his camera. “I did the series when I was a baby photographer and still in awe of my heroes.” he says, referring to Usher “Weegee” Felig and Gyula “Brassaï” Halasz, the two iconic night photographers to whom he has dedicated the book. Photo: Henry Horenstein Although primarily a portrait photographer, Horenstein’s work is also characterized by a deep sense of place. For his best-known book, Honky Tonk, first published in 2003 and reissued in an expanded edition in 2012, he created official portraits of country icons such as Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton and Ralph Stanley, as well as lesser-known performers such as Willis. Brothers, who sometimes backed up the great Hank Williams, and DeFord Bailey, a pioneering antebellum African-American country musician and founding member of the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville’s famous country music venue. He also photographed people queuing outside the Opry in their country and western cuisine, as well as residents of traditional bars such as Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in Nashville and the Hillbilly Ranch in Boston. A particularly atmospheric picture is called Drunk Dancing, Merchants Cafe, Nashville. “I am an observer” … Henry Horenstein. Photo: Boston Globe/Getty Images “You had to be quick, but that was OK,” he says of his approach, not just to the documentary, but to the portrait. “Performers didn’t tend to give me much time. But I wasn’t that interested in entering their world and they weren’t interested in mine. I am an observer. That’s what has worked for me.” Horenstein’s interest in music dates back to his time at Warwick in the mid-60s, when he traveled to London most weekends to immerse himself in the city’s burgeoning folk scene. “I went to so many little bars and ballrooms with folding chairs to see people like Bert Jansch. Towards the end of my time there, he had formed Pentangle. I remember there was a photographer who would shoot the artists and then bring the prints back the next week and sell them. Looking back, that might also have made me think about photography as a way of making a living.” At the time, Horenstein had no idea that there was a distinction between documentary and art photography. “There just wasn’t a lot of art photography being done. Everyone wanted to be a member of it [photo agency] Large bottle of wine? they were not interested in museums.” His images, though resolutely traditional, resonate over the years, both in their formal acuteness and in their insistence on the importance of the ordinary and the communal. Recently, when he showed the speedway series to some of the students he teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, a young girl immediately recognized one of the locations as her hometown of Thompson. “It turns out her grandfather and the owner of the track were fishing buddies.” He says. “She took the pictures back with her and was able to identify 80% of the people in them, because hardly anyone left that little town.” The Thompson speedway still operates, he tells me, but the sport is not as popular as it was in its heyday. In the meantime, the photographs acquired social and historical significance. “They are records of a local society from another era. An almost wasted time.” EP Thompson, one imagines, would have approved.
