Gram Spina Collection: Automotive Photo Negatives Backstory

Through my job as a photographer, automotive historian and archivist, I was tasked with appraising and helping to clean out the home and estate of Marty Himes, the founder of the Long Island-based Himes Museum of Motor Racing Nostalgia. When Himes died, his museum, which was founded in the mid-1980s and remained open until his death in 2023, had thousands of items of automotive racing history, in addition to a collection of Long Island-specific automotive memorabilia. 

 

While working at the estate, I found a tattered plastic bag filled with large-format photo negatives. The Himes family could not provide any information on who the photographer was, where the photos were taken, or the story behind the lens. So I began to do my own research. Perhaps the photographer worked for an insurance company or a newspaper.  We will never know.  

Digital prints of these negatives became the catalyst for a summer 2026 gallery show at The Art Room in Spring, NY. Curated by Jessica Wynne, the exhibit put a spotlight on images that were united by themes of concealment, giving the sense that the most interesting part of the story is what you don't know or can't see.

 

The preservation of found negatives has become an essential discipline in photography, and its importance cannot be undervalued. These images document a moment in time that will never be repeated, never come to pass again. And in a world that is rapidly changing, a medium that is threatened and enhanced by artificial intelligence and smart phones, preserving and honoring the legacy of forgotten moments in time is work that I highly value and believe in.