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Behind the Bricks: IMS Photo Vault

Have you ever wondered what happens to all of the photos people take at Indianapolis Motor Speedway? About 5 million photos — along with millions of negatives that have never seen the light of day — are stored inside a special fireproof vault at the IMS Museum.

On this episode of Behind the Bricks, IMS President Doug Boles takes us on a tour of the IMS Photo Vault.

The photo vault is on the second floor of the IMS Museum, but it’s not open to the public. The photos and negatives it holds serve as an archive of everything that’s happened at the speedway in its 113-year history, from last year’s Month of May festivities to the first Brickyard 400 and beyond.

“We’ve got over five million photos that were taken and are still up there in negative form, and then we take about a million photos a year — digitally — of the events that take place here at the speedway as well as the NTT IndyCar series. One of our favorite things for our collectors is the panoramic photos that people took of the starting field and the cars. I think we’ve got one of those from 1911,” Boles said.

Chris Owens, the manager of photo operations at IMS, stopped by “Daybreak” to tell us more.