Without safety: Juan Manuel Fangio races past Giuseppe Farina in his Alfa Romeo in 1950, who is following the race as a spectator after his accident.
Image: Edward Quinn
When Formula 1 began to lure the rich and beautiful to Monaco, Edward Quinn pulled the trigger – and put people at the center of his pictures.
AAt noon on May 21, 1950, Edward Quinn went to his place of work for the day. From the “Tabac” corner, just after the chicane at the port, he wanted to photograph the Monaco Grand Prix. It was Quinn’s debut as a photographer in Formula 1. “The start with the loud roar and rattling of the thundering engines was an overwhelming experience,” he writes thirty years later, in 1980: “As the cars raced towards the spot where I was standing , they were still in the pack and I knew they couldn’t all get through together.”
Nine racing cars collided after Giuseppe Farina spun in his Alfa Romeo. The race track was probably slippery in places after the wind had carried the spray from the harbor basin. “I pressed the shutter button on my camera as fast as I could, even though the shock made it almost impossible for me to hold the camera steady,” Quinn writes. It was something like the starting signal for his career as a motorsport photographer.
