COlin robertson roy
BIOGRAPHY AND BACKGROUND
1. Passion for Photography
I grew up in Zambia on a mission station far from civilization. Life was slow and thoughtful and our house was always full of people. This helped me develop a good sense of observation, an ability to notice the little things in the world that ultimately mean a lot.
What I love most about photography as a medium for expression is that it enables you to record these tiny and yet meaningful details of life in a completely spontaneous manner. Photography is ultimately all about fleeting moments, chance movements, unintended expressions, unusual gestures, unprepared poses, flashes of light and mood. In that 60th of a second it takes to record the shot on the film anything can happen. And it does. Things show up on film, which the human eye, moderated by our logical brain, normally fails to register. Photography has an amazing ability to surprise.
I regard every good photograph I take as an accident, a coincidence, a lucky lottery ticket. Of course, there is some skill and experience required: in getting the exposure and the focus right; being positioned correctly for the light; in seeing the shot.
But ultimately, once you are set up and start shooting away, you regularly have no idea of what is really going to be registered on that film. That’s exciting.
In this respect shooting celluloid black and white film is quite different from capturing a scene with your smart phone or with a digital camera. I have these too and I love to use them. But with film you know you will have to wait quite some time to see the result. If you have got it wrong you can’t just retake the shot, because that unique moment will have passed. Film definitely trains you to be more thoughtful, more concentrated. When I use my digital camera I might keep 10 images out of 100. Out of 36 frames on a 35mm film I will often have 20 keepers. One of my cameras takes such large negatives that I only get 7 frames out of a film. Sometimes all 7 are good.
Back on the mission in the 1960s my parents tell me that it took six months to get their films back from Kodak. Fortunately, I don’t have to wait that long, since I develop all my own films myself. But whether it is a month or only a day until I take that dripping meter-long celluloid film out of the developing tank the excitement of seeing what has come out on the negatives will never wane.
Great photographs rarely come from well-trained models carefully striking a pose for the camera. Brilliant images do arise in studios, but mainly after the subject thinks the photo shoot is over! When their mask has been taken off. They look away, laugh out of relief or take out their lipstick and… Click! The shot is in the can. For me a posed photograph rarely uncovers the real truth about a person or a scene. It takes a snapshot to reveal the soul.
My photography is nothing more than a collection of snapshots. I do spend a lot of time in advance working out where the action might happen, what the light will be and of what intensity at what hour. But once I am all set up I just click away, no longer noticing what is going on around me until the film is used up. And although I frame every single shot precisely I have no idea what odd movement the subject might make next and I am often unaware of who might be straying into the background and thereby creating one of those miraculous coincidences, which make the difference between a good picture and a wonderful picture. Many of my images have ‘random blokes’ in the background. By some coincidence they seem to be dressed as they would in the 60s. How did that happen? Even if I had paid them to walk into the shot they could not have been more convincing.
2. Why this subject ?
This series records the historic versions of the Grand Prix de Monaco and the Rallye Monte-Carlo. The pictures look old, but they were taken in 2014 and 2016. At first sight this appears to be a collection of photographs of vintage cars. In fact it is really all about people, the people who drive and maintain these cars, their navigators, wives, support teams, fans and, of course, it is also about the representatives of the ACM who organize the events.
Almost all photographs I take are situational portraits. A person in his or her environment is what motivates me most. The extraordinary passion and commitment of these amateur racers is absolutely inspirational. The first time I watched this event I came away thinking that it was one of the most impressive things I had ever witnessed.
Apart from a handful of glamorous and sporty lady drivers the participants are for the most part men on the wrong side of fifty. Several are over seventy! They no longer have the figures that would permit them to get into a modern F1 car and their eyesight and reactions cannot possibly be at their prime. And yet these men are real heroes, heroes who give everything in these races. They are not competing for prize money. But their faces speak of challenge, tension, concentration, of effort to the point of exhaustion. They compete as if their lives depended upon it and, of course, they do so in the knowledge that one small mistake will result in the loss of not only a million euros worth of machine, but could also cost them their lives. The array of safety features built in to a modern F1 vehicle has no place in a machine from the 1930s or even the 1960s designed only for looks and speed. Men like these do not imagine for an instant that anything could go awry.
The mechanics too are a sight to behold. They exude an extraordinary sense of calm, lovingly dismantling and rebuilding each car almost completely between every practice run, whilst the wives give the impression that there is not much about racing they don’t know.
There are of course some images that only seem to show cars. If you look carefully, however, you can often make out a driver or a navigator or at least his helmet and gloves, as in Maserati Driver. The human story behind Picnic needs no explanation. But, even in the frames where all that is shown is gleaming automotive metal, like Maserati Engine, there is a very strong human masculine energy exuding from the image.
These pictures tell the story of the passion of the creators of these extraordinary machines. They date from times when each individual part, each body panel, each widget, was hand-crafted one-by-one and all in the pursuit of aesthetic excellence and racing glory, many decades ago.
3. Why this special technique ?
To me the Historics of Monaco represent something quintessentially authentic. These cars are not copies or modern reincarnations of vintage vehicles. These drivers are not video game racers. No, this is the real thing.
It seemed to me that to do justice to such a subject that I should be as authentic as possible myself in my methodology towards creating my prints. This meant shooting with cameras from the 1960s and with lenses from that period. You need an old lens to give an old look. Most are taken with my early 60s Nikon F, a Leica and a twin lens Rolleiflex. The film is mainly Kodak Tri-X, first introduced in 1954. It yields very grainy negatives when developed in Agfa’s Rodinal developer, which uses a formula over a hundred years old. And, needless to say, if one wishes to achieve a period look to the image then one will also need to use vintage photographic paper.
I have mainly used vintage black and white museum grade paper made by Forte in Hungary. A carry over from Soviet times this company closed down many years ago- a tragedy for some, as Forte was the best quality paper ever made. All the supplies of Forte paper for this exhibition have been carefully collected bit by bit from all over the world. It has been kept for the last 20 or so years in the deep freezes of old master printers in the USA, Japan, Germany and even the Ukraine. There is almost none left in the world. I have come to get to know some quite extraordinary old gentlemen in my quest to find this paper. They and their craft have become a seriously endangered species and fortunately some of them have been kind enough to pass on to me some of their knowledge.
The Heroes of the Historics exhibition presents a limited edition set of prints. If only because of the finite availability of this Forte paper it can truly be said that this is an absolutely limited edition!
Finally, I have used an unusual chemical process to develop the Forte paper to make these prints. The extra grainy, high contrast and often colourful tonality to these prints comes from a process known as infectious development using lith chemistry. The technique only works well with very old paper, which contains high concentrations of silver. It has a drawback that it is extremely time-consuming and unpredictable by comparison with standard black and white silver gelatin prints. There is about a day’s work in total required for each finished print.
In my opinion, however, lith printing does great justice to this particular subject.
4. Biography
When Colin Robertson Roy was growing up in Zambia and in Scotland he spent much time sketching, painting and making things. He drew great inspiration from painting classes with the landscape artist, James McIntosh Patrick, a great master of composition, whilst in the Art department in his last year of school he learnt the important lesson that to produce good art you need to apply a lot more dedication and perspiration than you need inspiration. He also set up his first photographic darkroom in the coal shed at the bottom of his parents’ garden and bought his first Rolleiflex.
The economic realities of life, however, sent him off in another direction. For nearly 30 years he was distracted from his early passion by a fulfilling career as an adviser to business leaders and governments. Latterly he co-founded a mergers and acquisitions firm and established various other commercial and non-profit ventures. He is now back in his darkroom. And he never leaves the house without his Leica and a few rolls of Kodak Tri-X in his briefcase. He lives with his family in Monaco.
