Fresh Perspectives

We first came across photographer Jakob Eckstein’s work at a gallery in a small lobstering community off the coast of Maine during the summer of 2023. At the time, Jakob was preparing to enter his final year of photography school at Berlin’s prestigious Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie. In that exhibit, there wasn’t a car in sight, but Jakob’s eye for capturing emotion and the human condition – “the feeling of being alive, now”, as he puts it – with a camera was unforgettable.

A dual German-American citizen, Jakob went to a small liberal arts college in New York’s Hudson Valley with the hope of pursuing a career in writing. He recalls the moment during his sophomore year, while enduring a particularly persistent case of writer’s block, when the photography lightbulb switched on for him. “This is the language I'm supposed to be using. It's not the written word,” he says. “From there, I looked at hundreds of photo books over the course of a couple years. I didn't really look back.”

Far from your traditional Formula 1 photographer, Jakob has little experience shooting motorsports; instead, his speciality lies in crowd photography, a skill he has honed shooting events, demonstrations, parties and city streets. Jakob describes his practice as “straight,” a technical term for photography based on reacting to the world as it is, with minimal artificial preparation and manipulation. “You're just out in the world, shooting what you find. The key is to be everywhere and nowhere at once.”

Decluttering the mind, dropping expectations, and focusing on the moment are central to Jakob’s work. He compares the process of shooting to that of entering a meditative flow state. “When I'm shooting an environment like the paddock, all of my senses are turned up to 12, and I'm constantly moving, looking, and framing. I look like a restless puppy,” he says through a blooming smile. “It is a fully embodied experience. Pure action, almost without thought. It's like meditation, just reacting to whatever is coming in.” Easier said than done around 1,000-horsepower engines and masses of mechanics, media members, and fans.

In the exhibit, Fresh Perspectives, readers get to experience life in the paddock of the United States Grand Prix through Jakob’s lens: observing, reacting, capturing. Each photograph is raw, evocative, and direct – perfectly in line with Jakob’s guiding philosophy. “Life is a constant, confusing mystery that rewards those who pay close attention to it. Photography is a tool that lets me do just that.”