Shale Britannia

Jeff Scott's candid digital photographs offer us an intriguing glimpse of Speedway in the early 21st Century. Scott has travelled to tracks around the country, standing on terraces with the fans and in the pits with the riders and mechanics, as he pursues an interest that borders on the obsessive. The 245 photographs here reveal but a small sample of the collection that chokes his computer. Scott's pictures bear little relation to the images of sport photographers. He doesn't stalk his subjects with a telephoto lens, and the rather matter of fact archival quality of his images lend his photographs an authentic appeal - more of the family photo album than the sports media's managed icons. Through Scott's work, which inhabits the area of documentary, we can start to examine the working-class culture of this local community sport. From riders and start-line girls to mechanics and fans, he captures the personality and character of the tracks, as well as portraying the fans' relationships with their teams, in the context of the relentless decline of British regional identity. Speedway tracks and their surrounds may lack the sort of crowds that the corporate media values, but they are nonetheless densely peopled with the ghosts of a proud history. With these images, Scott reveals with tender melancholy a community as it struggles to recapture the glories of its past.