Leo Touchet’s At the Races gathers photographs of people at horse-racing venues in France and North America. The emphasis is significant: these are not described as studies of horses or sporting action, but of the human presence around the track. Touchet’s subject is therefore racing as a public occasion—a setting in which spectators, participants, and the rituals of attendance become as central as the contest itself.

Bringing together work from two regions gives the book a comparative reach without turning it into a comprehensive survey. France and North America share a long association with racing, yet each carries its own social customs and visual codes. The photographs’ cross-continental scope allows the racecourse to be considered as a recurring cultural environment: organized around competition, but also around gathering, observation, and display. The narrowly defined premise keeps attention on how people occupy that environment.

Published in 2018 by Photo Circle Press, the book is a compact, square-format paperback. Its modest scale suits the concentration of the project. Rather than attempting an encyclopedic account of the sport, At the Races presents a bounded photographic study in which place, event, and human behavior meet. The title’s plainness reinforces that directness: Touchet positions himself at the races, attentive to what occurs around their nominal center.

For collectors, the book merits consideration as a clearly delineated body of work by Touchet, distinguished by its human-centered treatment of a familiar sporting subject and by the dialogue it establishes between French and North American venues. Its interest lies less in documenting results or celebrated competitors than in preserving the social field of race day—the people who assemble there, and the culture made visible through their presence.