Photo Exhibit Gets Into the Mane Stream

Late July’s opening day at the Del Mar Race Track meant the revival of a tradition as seasonal as a bad sunburn: beers on the infield, bets at the booths, dress-up time in the Turf Club. But away from the sound of post-time announcements and hoofs chopping up the track, the Del Mar opener set in motion a few less-traditional events.

Among them is an art exhibit that captures some of the flavor of the racing season.

“Thoroughbreds: The Kentucky Derby Museum Photo Contest Winners,” a 39-photo exhibit that opened recently at Balboa Park’s Hall of Champions, provides a realistic look at the color and motion of horse racing.

“This is Del Mar season,” said Phil Bonomo, public relations coordinator for the museum. “That’s when horse mania is at its peak here in San Diego.”

Selections at the Hall of Champions’ all-color show--all prize-winners in an annual equine photography contest sponsored by the Kentucky Derby Museum and Nikon--range from traditional fine-arts photographs and action shots to slick pictures that could appear in a magazine ad or on the cover of a greeting card.

Not surprising in a show sponsored by a camera company, colors in all the photographs are strikingly bold and clear.

“We wanted a bright show,” said Jonathan Noffke, the Kentucky Derby Museum’s exhibits and collections manager. And they got it.

Yet there is more to many of the photos than brightness. Joanna McCarthy shows how close a photograph can get to painting without losing the vividness and spontaneity of the camera in her shot of a white thoroughbred inside a pink wall and its water-reflected image.

Other photographers treat horses as more of a Mr. Ed phenomenon. Viewing comic scenes like Keith Carey’s “Stubborn,” it is hard not to think of the subjects as having human personalities. In the photo, a pair of rebellious young horses gives us their back ends while two full-grown companions stare quizzically into the camera.

James Durso’s “I Don’t Feel Like It, It’s Too Cold and the Odds are Lousy Anyway” has a title that almost speaks for itself. But it’s worth taking a look at the composition of this comic shot, which juxtaposes a nervous-eyed thoroughbred running down a dark race track with a poster of a horse’s head facing the other way. Several fine action shots appear in the exhibit.

In Scott Goldsmith’s “First Turn at Churchill Downs,” even the color of the jockey’s caps is clear as seven horses charge forward.

Unfortunately, the shots of children in riding garb and cigarette-ad style, horse-against-the-horizon shots, don’t have the energy of such photographs.