Sundays With Von Dutch

Created by Richard Karl Koch over the course of four Sundays in 1970 for the L.A. Times" supplement West" magazine, this collection of intensely personal photography subverts today's prevalent recollections of Kenneth "Von Dutch" Howard, capturing him during a rare period of relative domestic bliss. Commissioned on the premise that many believed Von Dutch--the "father of modern pinstriping" and a guiding light in the creation of hot rod culture--was dead, Koch's photography and the accompanying West" article, "Make Me a Machine That Will Be a Piece of Art" by Tom Nolan, proved that Dutch was as prolific and creative as ever. Koch's photographs, the vast majority of them seen here in print for the first time, are accompanied by the original West" article and by a history of Dutch's work, written for this volume by Tony Thacker, executive director of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum. The resulting book is a must-have for kustom-culture aficionados and for those not yet familiar with a creative giant.


A famously crazed presence in the hot rod movement of the 1950s, rediscovered in the 1980s when '50s nostalgia swept pop culture, Kenneth "Von Dutch" Howard spent more than a decade essentially missing-in-action from the scene he'd helped to create and define. It was during that time--on four consecutive Sundays in 1970--that Richard Karl Koch visited Von Dutch in his Calabasas, California, home to photograph the father of modern pinstriping and soul of the hot rod movement for a cover story for the Los Angeles Times"' Sunday supplement, West" magazine. Koch's candid and colorful photographs from those shoots, the vast majority published here for the first time, provide a window on Von Dutch's missing years.
Here we see the enigmatic icon in his many guises, from cantankerous genius to freewheeling goof, machining handgun parts in his famous workshop/bus, casually clowning with vehicles left at his home by his friend Steve McQueen (including the car Von Dutch built for McQueen's 1969 film, The Reivers"), and working at the pinstriping that sealed his fame. Accompanied by captions that bring to light further facets of this period of Von Dutch's life and career, these photographs illustrate a little-known and largely fascinating chapter of hot rod history.