Earlier this year, I was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in the discipline of photography for my work on The Racing Report. I’m humbled by the recognition and grateful that Ohio supports artists in this way.
I began documenting short track racing in the region in the spring of 2021 when my friend invited me to attend a race at Barberton Speedway. I’ve been a huge racing fan since I was a kid (I was a die-hard Rusty Wallace supporter), and I wanted to photograph racing at the grassroots level. While I love the earth-shaking rumble of a V8 racing motor, I was interested in the human element more than anything else. I was fascinated by the stories of the racers, crew members, track workers and fans who make this their life.
I went back to Barberton for one more race that fall. Over the next couple of summers, I went to a handful of races, exploring new tracks and becoming an avid fan of dirt racing in the process.
I was drawn to this because it’s a form of authentic American culture. It’s community-based — every track has its own unique history, legends and lore. The guy who works at the muffler shop Monday through Friday can be a hero on Saturday night. In a post-COVID world where we are as lonely, isolated and divided as we’ve ever been, the race track was a rare place where people come together and enjoy a shared sense of community with one another.
It gradually dawned on me that I had to turn the occasional visit to the track into a long-term documentary photography project. In order to do it right, I needed to be at the tracks more than a handful of times a year.
Racing is expensive, inconvenient and dangerous. So is photographing it. I came up with the Racing Report to document grassroots racing in the region while keeping my gas tank full and the check engine light off. The positive response from Farm and Dairy readers over the past two seasons has been overwhelming. I couldn’t do the Racing Report without Farm and Dairy, our readers, and the drivers, track promoters and crew members.
I also could not have done it without the support of the Ohio Arts Council. I photographed eight races in 2025 from northwest Ohio to West Virginia, and I was able to make some badly needed upgrades to my camera gear.
As public arts funding faces cuts or even elimination, projects like this will disappear. While my photographs of Lernerville Speedway will never hang in the Louvre, they are a record of a way of life in a place in time. It’s a way of saying that all of this mattered enough to be remembered.
Thanks to our readers and the Ohio Arts Council for supporting this thing that I love so much. I can’t wait to do it again in 2026.
