The Automotive Photographic Art of Zoltan Glass

Ronnie Schreiber
by Ronnie Schreiber

A photograph of a driver sitting at side of the Nürburgring course, reading a newspaper, his Bugatti racer next to him. Zoltan Glass c. 1931.

Zoltan Glass was an amateur car racer and professional photographer who shot many of the major racing events in Germany in the 1930s as well as shooting commercial photography for automotive clients like Mercedes Benz, Horch and Auto Union.

Glass, however, was Jewish so things started getting difficult for him after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, though he doggedly worked on, ironically doing advertising photo shoots with cars sitting next to Nazi planes, and covering races and motoring events partially sponsored by the party. After the Nuremberg laws were passed in 1936, severely restricting the civil liberties of Jews, an associate of Glass’ from the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, Peter de Peterson, helped Glass move his base of operations to London, from where he managed his Berlin based photographic agency. Glass continued to travel to Germany to shoot advertising for his clients. After the widespread organized violence against German Jews broke out during Kristalnacht in 1938, and Jews were prohibited from running or owning businesses, Glass permanently relocated to London, taking all of his photographic negatives with him.

He struggled for a while but eventually got established working for ad agencies and magazines. Many professional photographers who would later find notable success started off using his studio in exchange for royalties on the photos they created there. He ended up mentoring a generation of British commercial photographers. His work for a risque British magazine also led to a lucrative side career in “naturist” photography. Surprisingly, Zoltan Glass never took up an interest in British motorsports and his commercial work in the UK had almost nothing to do with cars. Glass died in 1981 and left his archive of negatives to the British National Media Museum, which has digitized the photos. You can see more of his work at the Museum’s web site, but I’ve included a nice selection of his racing and automotive advertising work in the gallery below.

Zoltan Glass was a superb photographer. Looking over his photos one notices that very few of his photographs of cars were of the cars alone, nearly all of those photos include people and he had a deft touch capturing their humanity.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS










Ronnie Schreiber
Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.

More by Ronnie Schreiber

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  • SCE to AUX SCE to AUX on Sep 22, 2013

    What a treat; thanks for sharing with us, Ronnie. His sense of timing and perspective are fascinating. I liked the photo of the woman in the racing car, which is unusual for any era.

  • DC Bruce DC Bruce on Sep 23, 2013

    The joys of black and white photography with a Leica! Wonderful stuff, Ronnie. Thanks for bringing it to us.

    • Old Man Pants Old Man Pants on Sep 23, 2013

      Ever seen Rene Burri's work? Iconic B&W Leica available light photography with postwar coated lenses. The depth of the blacks and gleam of the highlights... you can just fall right into those photos, feel their surfaces with your mind. Hard to find, but his book titled Die Deutschen has a few of the most voluptuous car photos I've ever seen in 30 years of obsession with B&W.

  • Ajla If I was Ford I would just troll Stellantis at all times.
  • Ronin It's one thing to stay tried and true to loyal past customers; you'll ensure a stream of revenue from your installed base- maybe every several years or so.It's another to attract net-new customers, who are dazzled by so many other attractive offerings that have more cargo capacity than that high-floored 4-Runner bed, and are not so scrunched in scrunchy front seats.Like with the FJ Cruiser: don't bother to update it, thereby saving money while explaining customers like it that way, all the way into oblivion. Not recognizing some customers like to actually have right rear visibility in their SUVs.
  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
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