The Verso Project: Turtle Race of 1975

This limited edition T-shirt is part of the first capsule collection of The Verso Project, an archival storytelling initiative from The New York Times Store that highlights rarely seen images from The Times’s archives. The shirt front features a highly detailed reproduction of a raw, unedited Times photo. The back of the shirt shows the reverse side of the print, also known as the verso, mirroring the physical photograph and telling the story of its usage through hasty annotations and glued on newspaper clippings.

From image selection to T-shirt color (transfer paper blue, a reference to the reproduction techniques of yore), every element in this capsule collection is highly considered. They are hand-printed by Philadelphia Printworks, a Black-owned, socially conscious heritage brand and screen-printing workshop inspired by past and present social equity movements. Shirts from The Verso Project are limited edition and single run. Once they sell out, they will not be produced or made available for sale again.

The photograph on this shirt originally accompanied a Times article from July 1975. In his dramatic retelling, Len Ledbetter wrote, “The starter raised his arm, and the crowd surged forward to get a better view of the track. Crack! The sound of the blank being fired cut through the nervous chatter of the spectators, and the starting gate was lifted.” Was it the Kentucky Derby? The New York City Marathon? The Tour de France? No. It was the first International Turtle Race, held in Chester, N.J., and sponsored by the then-recently formed International Federation for the Advancement of Racing Turtles.

On the back of the photo, which is reproduced on the back of this shirt, is a cutting of Ledbetter’s epic opening scene, as well as observations from the photographer herself, Teresa Zabala, who appears to have typed up and ink stamped her notes directly onto the print. The back is also stamped with two dates, as this image was cropped and repurposed in a 1984 Times article on New Jersey’s turtle population.