Auto Art
Born and raised across the river facing Montreal, it is no wonder Jim Leggett has a long list of jobs, passions and creative influences. The Gilles Villeneuve racetrack sits literally on an island at the foot of his hometown street and he has covered every type of motorsports from karting to NASCAR, IndyCar, IMSA and F1. Leggett could never be accused of following a straight line in schooling, career path or his countless road trips. After a brief stint in a Graphic Design program at art college after high school, he was advised to try working in the field, learning on the job, rather than the more structured curriculum of formal education. Landing a job in a small promotions company he was a one man art department in 1979. “I knew just about nothing and had to learn very quickly on actual jobs from the other trades such as photographers, typesetters and printers,” laughs Leggett. “It was like being an apprentice in the old days. You learned your trade from each craftsman.” After a few years of working in studios and agencies, Leggett’s independent streak led him to quit working for a regular pay cheque and go freelance for the next thirty years. This led to an ever more diverse range of work including retail store layouts, display design, trade show booths, electrical household products, packaging design. Each of these required more learning of various manufacturing methods. A big change came when he was asked to provide racing photography for a large publisher in Toronto, Ontario. That soon led to writing race reports and then car reviews for major Canadian newspapers and specialty magazines which he supplied with his own photography instead of the stock shots from the manufacturers.
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P hotograPhy | J im L eggett
