Featured Art & Inspiration The Dave Friedman Archive

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The Dave Friedman Archive

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Love this work.... all up close, personal and intimate.
Ken miles I presume.....

 

I think my favorite from this group is this shot:



I love this kind of collision. Two completely different worlds smashing into each other and, somehow, instead of tearing apart, they lock in.

You’ve got this machine... a Corvette sitting there like it knows it’s dangerous. And then you’ve got a group of kids leaning in, studying it like it’s some kind of alien artifact that just landed in their neighborhood.

That’s where it happens... Not in the car. Not in the people. In the space between.

That tension, that curiosity, that quiet electricity… that’s the real subject. The car just opens the door.

And that’s art. Real art. The kind you don’t plan and sure as hell can’t fake. I’m jealous as hell of anyone who can see it and capture it before it disappears.

 

One and the same. My dad was pal's with Tom O'Connor back in the day, but I don't think I ever met him. I have some pretty incredible images of a car they built though. It was a Lotus 19 with a Ferrari v12 from a 250 Testarossa... Tom hired Stirling Moss to drive the damned thing.

 

I’ve got thousands of frames from the archive sitting here, and I don't think any of it is exclusive. The Henry Ford Museum already has the full haul, along with a few other ins***utions that actually know how to store things without spilling coffee on them. So I’m not carrying the burden of saving history from oblivion on this one.

And that’s a relief... Because it lets me enjoy it for what it is instead of treating it like evidence in a trial.

But I’ll tell you this, seeing it all in high resolution is a different kind of experience. It’s like stepping closer to the thing than you were ever meant to be. It’s glorious. And a little dangerous if you let it pull you in too far.

Once I get over a few hurdles in life, I will be helping a scholar research some stuff with the archive. That's my only roll in all this really.

 

These brackets are interesting, heat shields? something to keep the wires on? certainly not corvette ignition shielding as there is nothing over the cap. the flanges are extra thick on the headers and safety wired bolts....

 

Duntov didn’t show up to N***au in ’63 to participate. He showed up to drop a bomb. No warning. No press. No polite introductions. Just the Grand Sport, rolled out like a back-alley weapon nobody saw coming. He had been cooking that thing in the shadows, and when it finally hit daylight, it hit hard. Completely ambushed Shelby and his Cobras.

And he didn’t mess around with drivers either. Roger Penske. Jim Hall. John Cannon. Heavy hitters. The kind of guys you hire when you’re not interested in “seeing how it goes.”

These cars were really the first Corvettes built with one purpose, racing, nothing else. And the first that actually performed worth a ****. For a brief, violent moment, Carroll Shelby and his Cobras were outgunned. Not just beat, but outcl***ed.

It didn’t last of course... But for that moment in N***au, the balance shifted.

Those cars were pretty much one-offs... each different from the next. I’ve dug through a pile of photos and haven’t seen another setup quite like those wire looms. Nothing that lines up clean enough to say, “yeah, that’s how they did it.”

So who knows.

Could’ve been a one-off solution. Could’ve been a quick fix that worked just well enough to survive the weekend. That’s the nature of those cars, constant improvisation dressed up as engineering.

 

Sebring, a few months later, and the tone shifts from ambush to endurance.

You start to see the practical thinking creep in. Oil coolers hanging off the thing like extra lungs, because Sebring doesn’t care about your sprint setup. It’s a war of attrition down there. Heat, time, and bad decisions all stacking up.

And then, sitting there in the foreground like it knows something the others don’t, the Porsche 904. One of the finest machines ever ***embled. Light. Precise. Built with intent instead of brute force.

Look at the jack stands and you can read the whole story without a word. The Corvette propped up like a piece of industrial equipment. The Porsche barely needing anything at all.

Two completely different philosophies staring at each other across the paddock.

 

Oh man. What a neat car... I will keep a lookout for sure.

 

Sent to me by a buddy… and it stopped me cold even though I've seen it before.

Shot at N***au in ’63 by Slim Aarons, which is funny in itself because Slim wasn’t a car guy at all. He made his living photographing beautiful people doing expensive things in places most of us weren’t invited to. Pools. Yachts. Sunlight and money.

And yet here he is, standing trackside, pointing that same eye at something loud, greasy, and completely out of character.

And it works. Of course it works. Because he didn’t see a race car. He saw a scene. Light, color, composition, at***ude. Same game, different players.

I wish I had the slide in my hand... Making prints of this would be so much fun...