Photographer of international motor racing who became a friend of many grand prix aces
The work of the American photographer Jesse Alexander, who has died aged 92, captured an era of international motor racing in which the personalities of the drivers and the sleek lines of the cars they drove were not yet obscured by the visual noise of sponsors’ insignia.
At a time when competitors, photographers and journalists stayed in the same hotels, dined together and gave each other lifts to and from races across Europe, Alexander became a friend of many of the grand prix aces. Not just the Americans who crossed the Atlantic to try their luck during the postwar years, such as Masten Gregory, Dan Gurney, Richie Ginther and Phil Hill, the fellow Californian who in 1961 would become the US’s first world champion, but such European stars as Stirling Moss, Wolfgang von Trips and Jim Clark.