THE LENSMAN

n one of my phone conversations with Brian R. Nicholls—“Nick” to all who knew him—a few years before almost from the beginning in 1962, the year Joe Parkhurst founded the magazine. Parkhurst loved racing and needed a photographer/writer to send in news of Europe and Britain. Introduced by the editor of England’s , Nicholls and Parkhurst hit it off, and American readers got amazing racing and product pictures and news in the years that followed. Nicholls’ day job was in banking, but his love and true profession was photography. Nick’s archive of more than 20,000 images is remarkably important because, particularly in the early days, there were perhaps a half-dozen photographers covering British roadracing. During his decades working mostly in England, he shot the greats of the sport, first with a Certo Dollina 35mm camera, followed by a much more capable Leica M3, and then a Nikon FE, which he could buy new for the price of servicing the Leica. The strength of Nicholls’ legacy is that we still go back to his archive to illustrate stories. Here, we honor Nicholls (1931–2015) and his work with some of his favorite images.