Marc Andrew Elliott

Over the past 45 years, Marc Elliott has worked collaboratively with artists, museums, collectors, and gallerists worldwide as a craftsperson and advisor in all phases of photographic and artistic endeavors. All along the way he never stopped making his own work.

He now works independently with a select group of artists and artisans in a variety of disciplines. He maintains a traditional analog practice called Swaggertown in Saxonville, Massachusetts—processing film and printing in the darkroom while he continues to work digitally with Acorn Editions which he co-founded in 2017. He also serves as a technical advisor to Cambridge-based A Street Frames. He continues to publish folios as part of Swaggertown.

Born in Manhasset, New York in 1958, he received a BFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1980. Besides his work as the man behind the curtains for many, he served as a founding member of the Penumbra Foundation in New York and a board member for the Photographic Resource Center, Boston. His work is held in collections both public and private.

All images copyright © Marc Andrew Elliott 2024

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Paddock Views

Wandering the paddocks of Sears Point during qualifying for an IMSA Camel GT race in 1981 I saw a program notice for an upcoming vintage car race there - something that until then I hadn't known even existed. The early vintage races there marked the beginning of a persistent preoccupation that continues today.

An architectural photographer whom I'd met as a client in Boston in 1985 after I'd moved back east had similar automotive leanings and before long we started making annual pilgrimages to Lime Rock for the vintage races. The photographs on view here represent a small sampling from those decades of preoccupation.

For the first twenty years I wandered and photographed more or less indiscriminately. I had no real focus other than seeing what there was to see. My knowledge of the prewar cars was limited; I learned as I went, often from the car owners themselves supplemented by event programs and books purchased from midway merchants. Later, the internet.

While the cars were the main focus, as time passed I began to see the connections between them, the times that they had been created in, and the people who presently fielded and cared for them. In the early years when the paddocks were still unpaved, by turns dusty or muddy depending on late summer weather, there was a degree of informality that made the event something less of a spectator sport and more one of a participatory event. Racers mostly prepared and trailered their own cars and often camped at the track or stayed in nearby motels. The lavish tractor trailer rigs with the comforts of luxury living and professional race support came later, gradually.

Working with film enforces a degree of separation and discipline. I have twelve exposures to work with on a roll before I have to find a shady spot to reload. I can't change film ASA ratings mid roll and I can't instantly look at what I just did. Though I have learned to be careful and trust my instincts surprises abound.

Film and paper options continue to dwindle, yet with the notable exception of the long gone cadmium-rich Agfa Portriga paper the materials today are as good or better than they were in the time before digital. From my pensioner's perch it would appear that film and paper, at least in black and white, will see me out. A tip of the lens cap to Ilford, a British company that has held fast to a committment to silver despite the decline in demand that digital ushered in.

A big thank you to Francois and Beth of Yo Studio for their support and belief in this work without which these pictures would have remained in binders and boxs, unseen by you.

Marc Elliott

Saxonville, Massachusetts

2024

Regrettably I kept few notes from those early trips, instead relying on a once keen memory of the cars and their histories. My client turned close friend and I managed to keep some kind of track of what we'd seen and who we'd met in a dialogue of our own. He died a week before the Historics of 2015; since then I've been by myself but never alone there. Over the years I was lucky to meet and talk with several of the luminaries of the sport, many of whom were idols of sorts in my early years. Phil Hill, who once stopped in his rental Camry to ask me for directions, Carroll Shelby who was amused that I'd been willing to stand in a long hot autograph line just for the chance to have a few words but with nothing for him to sign, John Fitch who held court in his Phoenix year after year and who would patiently answer all the questions put to him. I could sense that he wasn't one to suffer fools but he was generous with his time for those with genuine interest. Sam Posey, Sir Stirling Moss, Brian Redman, Richard Atwood, Jochen Mass, Roger Penske, Brock Yates, and Paul Newman were among the many others.

The track at Lime Rock is a beaucolic setting. There are no grandstands. It is small enough to be able to walk around several times in a day while carrying too many cameras. It is fast. When they're running, the experience is immersive. Static displays of old cars, however rare and beautiful they may be, hold little interest for me. I go to to hear them fire up in the paddock, to see them trembling at idle surrounded by the heady aroma of unburnt hydrocarbons, lumber to the false grid, the grid, and then out onto the track. Priceless.

Just one day out of 365, but for me and a handful of others, a high holy day of the calendar.

Field Notes

Most of these photographs were made with Rolleiflex cameras. Twin lens versions, usually. Over the decades I have also wandered the paddocks with various Leicas, RB Graflexes, and even a 5x7 Deardorff. Working without an assistant the TLR Rolleiflex is best - small, light, simple. They also present the possibility of holding the camera overhead, a way of visually sidestepping the crowds that often gather around the stars of a given event, not unlike the press photographers covering JFK in the time when these cameras were the state of the art. The works on view here are black and white though I also have a corresponding color body of pictures.

I process and print all of my film myself in the darkroom that once belonged to my Lime Rock companion Willard Traub. When he died in 2015 I assumed the helm. Before that I had run a series of prolabs in and around Boston, New York, and Berkeley; there has always been a darkroom, or ten.

Some of the work is supplemented by digital - of the framed works presented here two of the thirty one were captured and printed digitally. Can you find them? The rest are all traditional silver prints made in the time-honored manner. For me it is less about an analog religion and more about results. I like the way optical prints look - they are comfortable in their own skin. The technology is fully mature and it is the one that I have spent my life immersed in both as vocation and avocation.