Supersonic Past

It was 50 years ago this month that Concorde was revealed to the world at the Paris Air Show. As senior photographer for British Airways Lewes’ Bob Tracy saw its legend grow.

- Duncan Hall

Bob Tracy learned his craft as a newspaper photographer – and puts his unique take on photography down to one man. “I had a mentor on the Braintree and Witham Times who used a 35mm camera,” he remembers from the café of Lewes Depot. “I realized that with a 35mm you could take interesting, more visual stuff with wide angles and perspectives that other people weren’t doing.” At the time most professional news photographers used speed graphic or twin reflex cameras rather than 35mm.

In 1969 Bob took his varied portfolio, gathered from stints working with the Braintree and Witham Times, Portsmouth Evening News and West Sussex Gazette, to British Airways where he became a senior photographer in their film and photographic office for eight years. His brief covered everything from technical shots of BA’s fleet to travel to places which were just opening up to tourism. “It was the early days of holiday brochures,” he says. “We had to be inventive. There weren’t guides readily available so we had to explore the country quickly. When we went to Sri Lanka we couldn’t go to the north of the island because the Tamils were fighting a civil war, but the tourist board lent us a gunboat and a helicopter so we could fly all over the island.”