Pins do not protect against age!
07/16/2024
Last week I received a rather thick envelope from Germany. It contained a pin from the VdM "Association of Motor and Mobility Journalists" as a thank you for 40 years of loyalty.
40 full years have passed since I graduated from the Higher Graphic School in Vienna as a photographer in 1984. It has also been 40 years since I was accepted into the VdM with the support of my friends and long-standing professional colleagues such as Ulrich Schwab and Yörn Pugmeister.
I was only 24 years old and Swiss at the time, but the German association accepted me straight away. It was the year when the F1 World Championship had its closest finish ever, with only a paltry half a point separating Niki Lauda, who has been dead for another five years, and Alain Prost in the two McLaren TAG-Turbo cars. It was the year in which the star of the unforgettable Brazilian Ayrton Senna rose in the Monte-Carlo rain race, which was stopped prematurely, where in the end exactly half a point was awarded that helped the Austrian to the title. It is also almost unbelievable that another 30 years have passed since May 1, 1994, when Ayrton Senna was killed in an accident.
I didn't realize how many years I've been part of the association, but now it's become crystal clear to me once again how my age is racing upwards in the style of Ayrton Senna.
My photographic beginnings in motorsport were in 1976, but back then it was still in the CH championship, which no longer even exists. So I've actually been at the racetracks of this world for 48 years, although for the last two years only at historic events. I photographed my first F1 GP without my father at Silverstone in 1979, when a certain Clay Regazzoni won the race. He hasn't been with us for 18 years now.
It was also a funny coincidence that we were able to photograph two of my favorite cars together last week for the September issue of "SwissClassics-Revue", both of which became classic cars years ago. After my first car, an Alfasud Sprint, I owned two Alfa Romeo GTV 6s between 1983 and sometime in 1986, followed by the Porsche 944, all three painted in a dark shade of brown. Of course, this brought back memories: This happened on a return trip from Le Mans back to Switzerland when I was greeted by the gendarmerie in Belfort after the payment barrier. At first the policeman congratulated me, nervously tapping the number 210 on a piece of paper with a ballpoint pen under various three-digit numbers, on being the fastest of the day. But then his mood quickly changed and I was glad to be able to drive on at all after paying a large deposit. Today, they would probably not only have taken my driver's license, but also the wonderful GTV 6 on the spot.
40 years of VdM, 40 years of graduation, 40 years of GTV6, plus 30 trips around the world with 554 F1 GPs, millions of kilometers on foot, by plane, in my own cars, all the rental cars, from which countless photo stories have emerged, which have now accumulated into an image archive of around one million negatives, slides and digital data, and all this now exactly one year to a month before retirement. Nobody knows what will happen next, but one thing is certain: apart from dementia, nothing, absolutely nothing, can take away my incredible memories in any way.
I would like to say a big thank you to the VdM and all my colleagues. What is certain is that I haven't aged at all except in the photos on these VdM press cards (2004-2024) ...
_RM.jpg)
