Livingston photos on exhibit at Racing Museum

An exhibit featuring photographs produced by six-time Eclipse Award winner Barbara Livingston and items in her extensive racing memorabilia collection opens on Wednesday at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Livingston, the chief photographer at Daily Racing Form who has been chronicling racing, breeding, and backstretch life through her camera since 1971, is widely considered the most accomplished racing photographer of her generation. She is also an avid collector who has digitized tens of thousands of old negatives and photos.

The exhibit, called “Capturing and Preserving Greatness: A Life’s Passion,” will run through Dec. 31, encompassing the Belmont Stakes Festival at Saratoga Racecourse this week and the entire seven-week meet at the track from late July to Labor Day. Curator’s Tours will also be offered daily during the run.

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Livingston co-curated the exhibit with the museum’s collections manager Annie Davis. The exhibit is sponsored by Daily Racing Form. In an interview, Livingston said the exhibit will feature approximately 100 photos and several dozen other pieces of “memorabilia,” mostly from the collections she has amassed over the years.

Livingston said she selected a mix of items to be included in the exhibit, running from the historical to the curious, including an extremely rare 4-inch-by-5-inch glass negative of the horse Colin, photographed at Brighton Beach racetrack from 1907. In those days, re-touchers made improvements to glass negatives, and the etchings are visible, Livingston said.

“It’s all a combination of what I found to be worthwhile historically to what I found just plain weird,” Livingston said. “And then you can’t not put in a Colin or a color photograph of Man o’ War because there just aren’t that many pictures like that out there.”

Livingston also tried to pull representative samples from her collections of photos taken by Jim Raftery, James W. Sames III, John C. Wyatt, Joseph Frederick Haase, and Gene Aldo. Most of those samples have been printed out on photo paper and will appear framed on the museum walls, Livingston said.

Livingston enjoyed the process of curating the exhibit, and she’s hopeful that visitors take time to visualize the stories behind the photographs, aided by descriptions she provided for the items that will be included on a guide available to visitors.

“It’s hard for people now to put together how much work used to go into taking photographs,” she said.

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