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An original 7x5" vintage photo from the Marty Himes estate.
Provenance: This photograph comes directly from the Marty Himes Racing Museum Collection, assembled over decades by Marty Himes - racer, restorer, and lifelong archivist of American racing. Every piece he preserved tells part of the story of motorsport’s rise from dirt tracks to the spectacle of the Indy 500. We acquired the majority of his photo collection after his passing. Many of his photos are extremely rare or even one of a kind. Professionally packaged in a rigid mailer for safe delivery.
Photo Overview
Nighttime crash clean-up on a packed short-track oval is captured in this dramatic 1959 stock car racing photograph, as wreckers, drivers, and track officials gather around an overturned coupe and a damaged race car while thousands of spectators fill the grandstands behind the safety fence. The image comes from the Marty Himes Racing Museum Collection and bears the photographer stamp of Peter DuBerg of Hempstead, New York, placing this hard-fought dirt or paved oval action on Long Island during the heyday of postwar modified stock car racing.
Peter DuBerg was a well-known Long Island racing photographer in the 1950s, documenting weekly action at tracks such as Freeport Stadium and Islip Speedway, which were hotbeds for Northeast stock car talent and later helped feed NASCAR’s national growth. Original crash photos like this are prized by historians because they record period safety gear, car construction, and packed grandstands that defined grassroots American oval racing in the late 1950s. Add this authentic, trackside survivor from the legendary Himes collection to your racing memorabilia now before it disappears into another serious collection.
Print analysis:
The back shows a period rubber date stamp "SEP 1959" and the photographer's name-and-address stamp, typical of darkroom prints made by independent racing photographers for sale or for track programs. The paper surface and image quality indicate a gelatin silver photo, not a lithographic reproduction. Given that DuBerg was active shooting Long Island stock car races at that time and the date matches the racing era depicted, this was almost certainly printed from the original negative within a short time of exposure, qualifying it as a Type 1 original photo.
Condition: Please see scans of the image we have provided for the most accurate and complete state of the photo. Many of the photos in this collection are very old and have age related wear, chips, creases, curling, etc. Others are remarkably well maintained.
