Terry Graham finds family and community in the high adrenaline arena of monster trucks

You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking a series documenting monster trucks would feature fortified Mad Max-esque rigs, exhaust systems spewing out licks of fire and rip-roaring, super-charged engines throttling pure energy. But, in his latest work, Terry Graham’s lens captures a more intimate, rarely seen portrait of Big Pete International – the Yorkshire-based truck drivers who claim to have the biggest monster truck in the world.

The series centres on Michael Murty, a 20+ year veteran and his younger brother Chris ‘CJ’ Murty, the driving force behind Big Pete. Together, the pair run two trucks, named Big Pete (red) and The Grim Reaper (black and blue). Terry’s affection for the drivers can be felt throughout. The series has a distant sense of nostalgia; warm reds, muted blues and analogue textures reflect Terry’s focus on “telling the story of the claustrophobic, dramatic and intense element of them putting on their shows together, as well as the quieter moments away from the destruction and the drama”.

What Terry manages to locate is the comfort and community in a world marked – on its surface – by chaos. But to get there, he had to earn Michael and Chris’ trust. This started with a meeting in a caravan, while the brothers and their team were tucking into a full English breakfast. As his approach relies on collaboration and sense of mutual trust, he “made it clear that I wanted to document them in and out of the trucks, and with no linear narrative in mind,” says Terry. “I wanted to learn what they did and how they went about putting on these shows through my lens.” As Terry learnt early on, while devastation, flaunting and performance are mainstays at Big Pete International, monster trucks are a family affair.

Terry set out to embrace the full scope of their reality, from the baked beans to the death-defying big air jumps. For Terry, one photo that shows this best is the wall of dog portraits in Michael’s caravan. “This showed that Micheal had complete trust in me for what I was doing, as this is an image from his home. It shows the love for his dogs, but also shows his longevity.”

It’s the images that reveal the depths of his subjects that Terry loves most. His other favourite being the still life miniature model of the lorry used to transport the trucks from show to show. The glass-preserved centrepiece is bathed in diffused light, tactile and grand, you can feel the reverence pouring out of it. “[Michael] explained so passionately why he does not hide these monster trucks in containers on the back of a lorry, they are showmen after all.”

As is so often the case with Terry’s work, his perspective allows him to capture the closely held contradictions of his subjects. In this case, subverting the stereotypical machismo one might expect from a sport centred on giant hulking hunks of metal piling on top of one another – without losing their glory and triumph.