Work-In-Progress. So far, I’ve done one Blurb prototype.

ABOUT THE PROJECT: Marc Karzen photographed activities around the Kentucky Derby with a gritty, unvarnished, immersive point-of-view that included side streets around downtown Louisville, night clubs, street parties, Churchill Downs’ backside and Derby race day.

After an encounter with Hunter S. Thompson, Marc Karzen took a deep dive into Thompson stories and then applied a “gonzo” point-of-view to his week long social photo essay at the Derby — which explored the cultural transformation that took place during the week in Louisville in the’80s.

Highlighted 21 images:

ABOUT GONZO JOURNALISM: Gonzo journalism is described a style, written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story using a first-person narrative. The word "gonzo" is believed to have been first used in 1970 to describe an article about the Kentucky Derby by Hunter S. Thompson, who popularized the style. It is an energetic first-person participatory style in which the author is a protagonist, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire. It has since been applied to other subjective artistic endeavors.

This essay steps into a 40-year time machine to 1984, where the Kentucky Derby isn’t just a race, but a historic cultural slice of Americana which mixes bourbon and racing along with Louisville Southern society. This is not a horse racing story, or pretty hats book (and there are plenty). This is a cultural lifestyle story about what it was like to go to the Kentucky Derby in the ‘80s.

ELEMENTS:

• KENTUCKY DERBY 1984 book, hardbound and paperback

• DERBY BOX SETS could be a combination of a signed print and signed book

• LIMITED EDITION PRINTS will be available for shows

• ARTIST TALKS, slide shows and book signings, ongoing, could happen every May

• Essay (rough) is below the images, at the bottom of this page

Targeted audience potential:

• People who aspire to attend the Kentucky Derby

• People who have attended the Kentucky Derby, 150,000 each year at the races

• Photography book collectors who relish film photography

• Hunter Thompson ‘gonzo’ fanatics

• Horse racing people

• Triple Crown race followers

• Betters and gamblers

• People from Kentucky

• Bourbon lovers and Bourbon tourists in Louisville

• Brits who love and live horse racing culture

• Facebook groups about old Louisville, several

Kentucky Derby 1984 Gonzo Edition

Additional images. Edit, title and sequence in progress. Prototype #1 in progress.

Introduction

INTRODUCTION BY PHOTOGRAPHER MARC KARZEN

Everyone asks the same question, “What’s it like to go to the Kentucky Derby?”

As far as the Derby, I had been to seven at that point. Having gone to grade school in Louisville, I attended Secretariat's famous run in 1973, the 100th Derby in 1974 and several others. Over the ‘80s, while living in New York, I was part of a pilgrimage down to Louisville which became a regular event — so, I knew my way around Churchill.

In 1984, I set off on a photographic tour, to capture the cultural landscape around Kentucky Derby 110. At the time, the week long Kentucky Derby Festival included the boat race, the Pegasus Parade down Broadway, as well as some parties — which led to events over at the track at Churchill Downs on Friday for the Kentucky Oaks and the Derby on Saturday since 1875 — and has been the first Saturday in May since 1931.

But here’s the main thing — growing up in Louisville, all children are raised know, by the age of 10, the three most critical lessons can guide you through your entire life. Number one; you must learn how to make a bourbon on-the-rocks, when asked, “for your uncle on the other side of the living room.” Number two; you learn how to read a Racing Form. And number three; you learn how to slip by the security guards at Churchill Down and get into the Turf Club and onto the 3rd Floor Clubhouse.

Understanding these basic principles, have prepared me to drop-in to any horse race, anywhere, anytime.

As I was developing my photo journalistic projects and photographic approach — covering the Kentucky Derby in a fresh unvarnished new way, was the objective.

Over the years in NYC, I regularly contributed and took assignments with Rolling Stone Magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, as well as fashion magazines at Condé Nast plus record labels — shooting environmental portraits and fashion stories.

So, taking a deep dive, granular, holistic approach and covering an event like the Kentucky Derby — while hundreds of the best sports photographers on the planet pointing their lens at horses galloping around the track, was the story-telling challenge.

And years later, this essay returns to answer the ongoing question, “What was it like to go to the Kentucky Derby?"

Let’s go to The Derby and mix some tradition, mud, glamour, horses and bourbon with a twist of grit — for an unvarnished look that included side-streets in downtown Louisville, night clubs, street parties and scenes from all-around-the-track.

Gonzo Derby

In New York, I worked on Late Night with David Letterman as special photographer in the ‘80s where I photographed the “bumper” images that were used before and after commercials as station IDs — plus I also photographed special stills on Saturday Night Live.

This Derby project was inspired in part when I photographed Hunter S. Thompson, who appeared on Late Night one evening in 1982. That night, shooting production stills, Hunter brought a cigar size box on to the set and put it on Dave’s desk. Dave asked what it was and and Hunter said it was “a bomb.” Dave slid the box across the desk and off camera.

After the segment, along with segment producer, Sandra Furton — I walked into the hallway of Studio 6A and encountered Thompson.

He described how he wanted to take his box of M-80s and explode the skyline set, behind the windows during the next segment how exciting it would be.

During this spontaneous face-to-face encounter with Thompson — I recalled a time, just two years before when I was sitting at the Jerome Hotel Bar in Aspen after skiing with my friend Ron Mesaros, where we met Mesaros' friend, photographer Annie Leibovitz. She came storming into the bar and Mesaros asked, “Annie, are you ok?” Leibovitz told us how she had just been photographing a portrait of Hunter Thompson and how she mistakenly let him see one of the test Polaroids. Then she recounted how he grabbed her Hasselblad, on the tripod, and threw it into the burning fireplace. That shoot was over.

At that moment in the hallway at NBC, I was pretty sure that Thompson’s box of M-80s was real.

We talked Thompson down from trying to blow-up the set and how it wouldn’t be nice to interrupt the next segment with Mel Blanc. Hunter then left the building quietly, without his box of fireworks.

I now knew why he was feared, but why was Thompson adored? Seeing and hearing Thompson in action, made me want to understand his writings and take a closer look at Thompson's body of work. Coincidentally, Thompson is also a native of Louisville.

In 1970, Thompson was assigned an essay in Scanlan‘s, which was the anti-establishment (some would say subversive) short lived monthly magazine. The project became the infamous ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved’. It set Thompson on the path to establishing his own sub-genre of ‘New Journalism’ that became ‘Gonzo’, a journalistic style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative. Thompson remains best known for ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ (1972), a book first serialized in Rolling Stone in which he grapples with the implications of what he considered the failure of the 1960s subcultural movement.

Gonzo journalism disregards the strictly edited product once favored by newspaper media and strives for a more personal approach; the personality of a piece is as important as the event or actual subject of the piece.

Happy Derby!
Marc

For reference: To see the text from Hunter Thompson’s,‘The Kentucky Derby: Decadent and Depraved’

email for: Marc Karzen

Examples of a few anecdotes:

BILL DOOLITTLE Writer, speaker, journalist

I was a fourth string reporter for The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times in those days. I got to write about the Derby, but I was stuck with the minor horses. But I was also working on the exhibit design for the new Kentucky Derby Museum, which would open later that year, 1984.  We wanted to follow the winner of the that Derby with a photography crew in the days leading up to the race. But who would it be? I picked Swale and we paid special attention to him, which worked out great.

People ask me what the Kentucky Derby is like — and some of it is all dressed-up. But it’s also a big carnival. People come in from everywhere, and all walks of life – including drifters and grifters and card sharks. You know the movie, The Hustler, that’s set here at Derby time. Shooting for big money -- when there’s plenty of money moving around. But more that all that, the Kentucky Derby is the championship of horse racing, and a big whirlwind of excitement starring all the great names of the sport. The very most important thing is to pick the winner – and it’s not easy.

ED GARBER Founder 610 Magnolia Restaurant in Louisville

Our restaurant was close to the track. But for us, for Derby, we were working 18 hours a day during Derby we will get swamped — so for us Derby was just hard work.

Our friends would come in as well as Derby trainers, after their day at the track and have dinner at the bar.

LEE WAGNER Owner of Wagner’s Pharmacy, The Track Kitchen and Becker & Durski Turk Goods

All of those guys made Wagner’s a stop. Laffit Pincay, Eddie Delahoussaye, Pat Day, Bill Shoemaker — after the workouts, after morning training — they all came in.

I remember the year that Bob Baffert came in when he had Silver Charm and he sat down — and for the years after and his crew, a regular every time he came in. Same with Nick Zito, Wayne Lukas, all those guys — it’s their hangout after training hours and before the races started. Now now the current new ones that continue to come in are Kenny McPeak, Greg Foley, Dallas Stewart, Brendan Walsh, Dale Romans, Billy Mott — and Wayne Lukas still comes in to get his chili one a week during racing — and we feel fortunate and blessed that we get to see him and talk to him and make his silks — and hope we're doing it for years to come.

CHARLSIE CANTEY First Female Horse Racing Broadcast Analyst and Galloping Reporter

The thing that I enjoyed about the Derby, the only real salvation, was being out on the back stretch early in the morning and watching the horses train. That was my element.

That was the thing about the Derby —  you’d never knew what the weather was going to be. It could be hot. It could be cold. It could be windy and tornados. It could be snowing. You never knew.

And the town morphs for Derby week and that's what's so incredible. People are parking in the front yards around Churchill Downs for 20 bucks. It’s so incredible how that whole town turns into the Kentucky Derby, from one end to the other. You don’t even need to be at Churchill Down, to get the feel of the Kentucky Derby that week.

The traffic becomes crazy across the city. Roads are blocked. It becomes something else. Like Wagner's, you go to breakfast over there, then at the track in the morning and getting notes on how everyone is training. But I was at the track in the morning and then taking off to go over to production meetings and rehearsals. It was never fun because it was so difficult to get around.