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Hi all. I’m the proud owner of a large collection of original negatives shot at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway dating from about 1957 to about 1967. Unfortunately the condition of these negs ranges from poor to usable due to sloppy fixing and washing back in the day plus poor storage in the intervening decades, however the content is glorious! So I’m really keen to show them off to all the Indy tragics like myself here.

Having said that, I also have a selfish motive for posting them. The negatives are in many “sets” in separate envelopes, and most of the envelopes are either poorly labelled or not labelled with any useful identifying info at all. I’m keen to accurately catalogue them, so as I work my way through the process of scanning them all I’d really appreciate any assistance from the experts on the forum in fleshing out the details – i.e. names, estimated dates, what’s happening in the photo (eg. I probably wouldn’t know the difference between scrutineering and a normal team garage scene), etc. Some will be plainly obvious of course, but I still don’t want to make any assumptions because as much as I love the history of the race I’ll admit I’m no expert. As any details come to hand on this thread I’ll edit the photos’ captions.

I’ll try and stick to a routine of scanning a new batch every couple of weeks and then posting the pics in smaller chunks over the following days.

To start with, here’s a sample of what I think are the earliest negatives I have. The envelope was labelled “Speedway drivers’ head shots 1957”. Enjoy! And thanks in advance for any help you can give me with the cataloguing process.

Set01-01- Don Branson