“I was drawn to the stark contrast between everyday punters out for a good time and the rarefied world of racehorse owners and wealthy country folk”
– Michael Prince on seeing people at the race course
Shots from the hip. Head shots. Low-angle shots. Full on shots. Shots taken against dark threatening skies or blue-wished for summers.
No one cares. No one sees.
Click. Another. Click. Another.
Each shot captures a face, an essence. Not that pretend face. You know the one. Performative. Say Cheese. Smile. That one.
No.
Shot unawares. Head down. Head up. Not looking. Busy. Not a face to meet a face. Unguarded. Studying form. Full of hope. Full of anticipation. A win by a length. A ten-to-one. A cert on the three-thirty.
In one simple flash, life is here.
The photographer is Michael Prince.
Between 2009 and 2010, Prince travelled to different racecourses across Scotland where photographed the people “within the charged atmosphere of the public enclosures—moments of intense focus, anticipation, and obsession. Rather than the spectacle of the race itself, my attention was drawn to the spectators: the gamblers, the watchers, the believers.” The resulting photographs became part of a series called In Your Race.
Born in England, Prince relocated to Scotland in the 1990s where he started out as a graphic designer at Scottish Television. His passion for photography led him to working behind the camera. He became a director and made several critically acclaimed documentaries on writer John Irving, the dancer Michael Clark, the band Franz Ferdinand, and the photographers Brian Griffin and Ron O’Donnell.
Over the past three decades, Prince has produced a distinctive and brilliant portfolio of photographs covering portraiture, landscape, and stills photography. His subjects range from mannequins, horses, disused funfairs and those forgotten shops and attractions which invoke pleasurable memory.
His photographs for In Your Race have the same startling power and energy found in work by photographers like Scot Sothern and Martin Parr (though Parr rarely got this close to his subjects). Prince’s body of work places him within the top rank of photographers working in Britain today.
How did the project ‘In Your Race’ come about?
Michael Prince: Photographing punters at racecourses grew naturally out of work I was already making with a small Canon camera. I had been documenting rural life at Scottish agricultural shows, creating close-up portraits of cattle and sheep farmers as well as members of the public attending the events. These images were made from as close as possible without attracting attention; the farmers and families were entirely absorbed in preparing and presenting their prized animals.
I’m drawn to the atmosphere and excitement of these rural gatherings, and the racecourse offered a similar environment—another place to blend into the crowd and work largely unnoticed.
Michael Prince: I continue to develop my agricultural Showtime project, though my approach has since changed. I now use a larger, high-resolution mirrorless camera with additional flash. The work is more conspicuous, and the images have a markedly different aesthetic, yet I remain focused on capturing those unguarded, in-between moments.
What attracted you to the project ‘In Your Race’?
Michael Prince: I was drawn to the stark contrast between everyday punters out for a good time and the rarefied world of racehorse owners and wealthy country folk, who signal their status through expensive tweed tailoring and polished leather boots. The divide between beer drinking bettors and the glamour of the winners’ enclosure is compelling, yet as a punter you can move freely between these two distinct environments. The busier the racecourse became, the easier it was to work at close range, remaining largely unnoticed.
I was particularly drawn to older country folk and numerous ‘characters’ that I’d lock onto, absorbed in the runners and riders and the careful handling of their betting slips. I tended to work in the moments leading up to a race, as punters studied the form and placed their bets. I would be taking photos from waist level, guessing the composition, relying on the flash to fire as soon as the camera had autofocused. The wide-angle lens exaggerated foreground details—hands, newspapers, betting slips—while faces were exposed against the sky. These are not the kinds of images we usually see: people frozen mid-gesture, caught in the charged atmosphere of the racecourse.
What did you want to accomplish?
Michael Prince: The intention was to create a body of work that offered insight into a side of horse racing we know exists but rarely enter. I was curious to see how close the camera would allow me to work, and what kinds of images that proximity might produce. Digital technology has advanced considerably since then, and today the images would be far sharper and more detailed.
Photographs copyright Michael Prince, used with kind permission.
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