Jon Nicholson has documented Formula 1, the richest sport on earth for years. That’s not all, he’s also spent a year with the England rugby team and worked with Chelsea Football club. But we’re not talking about the sort of stock sport photography that you might see on the sports pages although he’s more than capable. Jon applies his traditional documentary photography principles to his sporting subjects and produces as strong and as gritty results as his work with Unisef and the Red Cross.

‘I grew up with Damon Hill. When he raced and started in Formula 1 we planned to go off and do loads of books, it was a great opportunity to document his career’.

Jon actually had six or seven years experience shooting before Damon’s entrance into the Formula, with jading results.

‘I did a book called ‘Five Days’ – five days of a grand prix, which was all about the fans. I was so pissed off with the money and the politics, I just wanted to go and photograph fans. So I sat on hillsides and that. Some of the photographs in this slideshow are from that book’

The black and white images hold a sense of reality away from the glitz and money of race day

‘That picture of Damon and Ayrton together in an office situation, that was shot the day Ayrton died. It was shot at twelve o’clock and at two o’clock or whatever it was, he was dead. When you start getting into those situations you’re so highly charged that you totally cut yourself off, you’re just observing. That’s what my photography is about - people and observing people, so forget what’s going on, you’re just looking at how people are reacting and what they do, then when something grabs your eye you just hit the button’.

History in the making.

‘Your capturing the way we live our lives. Formula 1 is the biggest sport in the world and people go a bit sort of psychotic when they start getting around Formula 1 cars, they turn into gibbering wrecks and that’s quite amazing to see. Sport and particularly motorsport - because we all do it, we all drive. We can relate to speed, flying round corners and bumping off curbs, hopefully not hitting anyone or another car… but we can relate to it and that makes it even closer’.

So racing is in all of us? Is that the drive for the images?

‘I’ve never been a race fan, I just happen to know someone who became a racing driver. I can’t really get worked up about a car doing two hundred miles an hour. But… I can get worked up about fifty thousand people sleeping on the hillside in the pissing rain in Germany, you know, and I can get worked up about a race in Brazil where ninety percent of the population can never afford to go and see the race. Those are the things where you just have to go out with one camera into the streets and photograph them. I do a lot of work with Unisef and the Red Cross and we’re going into fairly volatile situations and it’s the same thing, you detach yourself from the situation and you observe the people. Even if someone gets shot or blown up or whatever. Hopefully you’re not going to get shot at a Grand Prix but it’s the same thing. That’s the same attitude’.

Actually the drive for Jon is the subject. He works with film and digital. That doesn’t matter so much. What’s important is staying true to what he sees.

‘I lecture at universities and the students are all into manipulating images and that’s fine, if that’s what they wanna do. But you can’t do that and then start talking about Aids, then go and fuck up the issue by completely corrupting what you’re seeing. You know? If I go to Africa and shoot a story about people dying that I have to transmit back to a paper, I’ll do it on
digital and film. I’ll spend more time on the film pictures than I do on the digital ones. They’ll get sent back and its horses for courses.

With digital, if you wanna go the art route, that’s fine, no problem. But come out and say that, don’t start getting your pictures and taking things out to make the picture a little better because that doesn’t wash – you’re not being true to your subject’.

Jon is passionate about this point. This for him means everything about being a photographer. Without integrity you’ve nothing. He does all his work in the camera and that’s true discipline for his art in a world where he can change everything in Photoshop.

‘You’ve got to be true to the people and to their whole way of life. You can’t go in and belittle it or change it to something it’s not. They’re living in the shit, so show it, be accepting and they will except you because they believe in your course and your story, you’ll get better access and you’ll get better pictures. Don’t just walk into some slum and spray your camera, then say ‘oh shit, don’t like that one, delete that one’ because you’re not really thinking about what you’re doing’.

And that’s what will stand the test of time – thinking about what you’re doing and retaining some integrity.

In spite of the digital revolution in music and the invention of a million dance records, we still listen to the Rolling Stones. And Jon is a Rolling Stone of photography, making sure we don’t all forget the fundamental principle of capturing the truth of life and not losing it inside some Photoshop filter.

Rock on Jon.