By: Bill Doolittle
Photos By: Mark Karzen
Growing up in Louisville, Marc Karzen never thought much about the Kentucky Derby until he met fellow Louisvillian Hunter S. Thompson on the set of the “Late Night with David Letterman” show in Los Angeles. Karzen was the Letterman show’s still photographer, and Thompson had written “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” an outrageous piece published in Scanlon’s Magazine, and a key component of Thompson’s first book,The Great Shark Hunt. Thompson was being hailed as one of the first of a new breed of “Gonzo” journalists who inserted themselves into the story -- a style being hailed as the “New Journalism.” And as anyone who read Thompson’s wild tale might wonder: Could the Kentucky Derby actually be decadent and depraved?
To find out, Karzen came home to Louisville to shoot his own Gonzo photo version of the Derby. The result is a trove of images from the 1984 Kentucky Derby. Swale won the race, a fact that seemed more than not important to Karzen, who divided his time between high society lawn parties, low-society partying on Central Ave., and moments around the track – most of which seem to take place on wet and muddy days. His images are very colorful in an age when the Derby and other sports events were shot mostly in black and white for family newspapers.
Karzen says he’s working with a publisher, and has arrayed many of his Kentucky Derby images at Karzen.com. A few shown here.
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