The Work Of Zoltan Glass

Zoltan Glass was a jewish kid that grew up in Germany in the early 1900’s. In 1925 or so, he decided to move to Berlin to pursue his passion in both auto racing and photography. It wasn’t long before folks at Mercedes, Auto Union, and other manufacturers began to notice his great eye and stunning photographs. They commissioned his work and Zoltan began photographing at wonderfully historic tracks such as Nurburgring and the Avus circuit near Berlin. As time went on and Zoltan grew as a photographer, the social balance of Germany began to waver. Zoltan recognized the danger and fled to England in 1938 to become a fashion and nudist photographer (hells yes – ED).

Obviously, this is pretty far from traditional hot rods and customs… However, I thought you guys would appreciate the images and the perspective from another part of the word. I thought of two things while studying the images:

1. How amazing is it to see the Nazi symbols from the view finder of a jewish man? Zoltan wasn’t shy – was he? If you didn’t know the evil future of the party, you would think that Zoltan was looking on with innocent curiosity, “Why are these people saluting?”

2. The 1930’s was a hard period throughout the world – not just America. Still, these fellas found a way to make some beautiful machinery a reality. Is it just me or do these cars look and seem much more refined than the machines we were building in states during the same period? Thank god we were better at building performance aircraft just a decade later!