Car photographer Larry Chen has reflected on what it was like covering the late motorsport legend Ken Block. Describing his intensity in his work for the racing driver as getting the shot "come hell or high water", he spoke on the Road to Success podcast about how demanding the shoots with the rally star really were, but how with this pressure came huge success.
Block, a rally driver and entrepreneur, co-founder of Hoonigan and driver of the Gymkhana film series, sadly died aged 55 in a snowmobile accident in Utah in early 2023. Chen, a talented photographer who had often collaborated and worked with Block across countless events, has now spoken out on what their partnership looked like after writing about it in his new book, Life at Shutter Speed.
“I talk about him a lot in this book, you know. I talk about early on meeting with him, working with him, and then him giving me a break and giving me the recognition. I pushed hard - beyond hard. Like, I’m talking about beyond my physical limit and probably bad for my health limit for few people in this world and he was one of them.
"It’s fair to say that it was always the most for him because of what he demanded from everybody surrounding him but also, from that came greatness. I’m talking about sacrificing sleep. I’m talking about sacrificing my body.
“People always— always when they’re watching my YouTube videos or seeing my Instagram, when I complain about the suffering, they call me out and they’re like, ‘Oh, come on, Larry, it’s not that bad. You can deal with this or whatever.’
"I’m talking about full-on fevers for being sick, but still being out here. Obviously, that’s a little looked down upon now. I would reconsider what I'm doing now. But back then it was... if I was up all night with food poisoning, doesn’t matter. Still needed to be there on time for this moment or else, you know, it could be extreme cold, extreme heat, extreme this... it could be whatever. Come hell or high water, these pictures need to exist. And that’s what we did for Ken.
“Ron [Zaras, Block's personal photographer] and I knew that he was going to do this," Chen said on Block's famous Rally de Catalunya double-doughnut. "Nobody else knew. Ron and I knew he was going to do this, but we didn’t actually know.
"I think there was some conversation about if he was within striking distance of winning the stage, he was going to scrap it. I think there was some kind of conversation like that. And there’s always a real chance for him to do well and win because he was such a wheelman. But of course, he’s also the showman.
"And when we saw, OK, maybe he’s like third on stage or fourth on stage, we’re like, OK, he’s going to do the doughnut. Yeah, there’s always stuff like that. And it’s always his vision, Brian Scotto, the director’s vision of what the perfect picture could potentially be, and they’ll let me know. But I always have my own take.
"And the fun thing that I’ve talked about a lot is that the Easter egg when you’re watching the Gymkhana films is to find me in the films because I may not be where the camera is. I find my own angle to what I interpret is the best angle. So that unfortunately means that I’m in the shot a lot."
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