It's off the races: "faster: the pomona drags" examines a remarkable head-on confrontation between two technologies that have shaped the Southern California psyche--cars and cameras.

• Author: McCulloh, Douglas
• Position: Focus on America - Faster: The Pomona Drags, 1960s Photographs of Pomona Drag Racing - Critical Essay

DRAG RACING is the ultimate expression of Southern California's cult of speed. Like Hollywood's camera culture, it is a home-grown phenomenon. The 7.000-horsepower engine of a top-fuel dragster today burns through volatile nitromethane at one-and-a-half gallons per second, pushing the 2,225-pound package of car and driver from zero to 330 miles per hour in a mere 1.320 feet. The dragster is the quickest-accelerating machine on Earth. Hit 100 mph in the first second or you have lost the race. "Though perfectly useless in any 'rational' sense." writes historian of technology Robert C. Post, "a dragster is by any measure a mechanical marvel.

If drag racing has a shrine to the marvelous, a top contender is the quarter-mile, straight-line course at Pomona. When drag racing exploded off the starting line at Pomona in the 1960s, a small group of photographers were there to capture the action, if they could.

Susan Sontag defines photography as "meta-art," the art that devours all others. In the case of the drags, though, the contest was a dead heat. That tension permeates the proof sheets--photographers confronted with the speed and fury of drag racing and sorting out how to tackle it as they went along. The photographers knew they had to shoot the start, a piece of the hurtling action, and the trophy presentation at the end. Beyond that, they just tried stuff.

In the 1960s, the language of drag racing photography was not yet codified. The drags were too new and evolving too quickly. Said another way, the photographers had the advantage of not knowing precisely what they were doing, so they could give anything a shot. Drag photography echoes 1960s rock and roll, an explosion of experimentation that took less than five years to go from the Beatles" "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (Oct. 17, 1963) to "'Why Don't We Do It in the Road" (Oct. 9, 1968).

The photographers aimed their cameras at racing powered as much by enthusiasm as by nitromethane. Philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset defined technology as "'the production of the superfluous." The early drag racers launched into superfluous production with intelligence and zeal. Don "Big Daddy" Garlits. Mike Snivley, Connie "The Bounty Hunter" Kalitta. Pete Robinson. and Don "'The Snake" Prudhomme piloted one innovative machine after another. In 1962 alone, 27 world records were set, then smashed.

Drag racing, like photography, was in a state of accelerated evolution. Driver Don Jensen notes: "We started with a...