WORDS: ELLIOTT HUGHES | PHOTOS: REVS INSTITUTE
The Revs Institute museum in Naples, Florida, has acquired the 29,000 historic images that comprise the André Van Bever (AVB) Photography Archive. The AVB Archive joins more than 120 archival collections currently in the museum’s possession, including the world-renowned Collier Collection of historic vehicles.
“As a custodian of automotive history, I am delighted to see André Van Bever’s iconic photography find its home here,” said the Revs Institute’s founder, Miles Collier.
André Van Bever was born in 1922 in Brussels, Belgium, and he rejected a career in his family’s jewellery business to pursue his passion for photography. His first foray into automotive photography occurred in 1946, when he covered a local motorcycle race as a favour for a friend. This marked the beginning of a remarkable four-decade career, during which Van Bever and his wife Nicole Englebert Van-Bever photographed the men and machines that defined one of motor sport’s defining eras.
“Throughout his career, André Van Bever chronicled motor-racing history, from Juan Manuel Fangio in 1949 to Niki Lauda in 1975, making him one of the most renowned visual witnesses of post-war motor sport,” explained the Revs Institute’s curator of collections, Scott George. “The images will be indexed and digitised, making Van Bever’s work more accessible to researchers, scholars and the motor sport community through the Revs Digital Library.”
The majority of Van Bever’s portfolio originated from his 28-year tenure as the official photographer for the Belgian newspaper Les Sport, during which he covered some of the most famous races of the 1950s and 1960s. From here, Van Bever continued to document motor sport in a freelance capacity until 1975.
For more information about the Revs Institute and the AVB Archive, click here.
