Track & Field: Drawing from the Arena

Year: 2004-05
Medium: multiple exposures on 35mm Film. Chromira Prints.
Size: Dimensions vary.
Title: All photographs in this series fall under Track and Field: Drawing from the Arena.
 

For years I have idly collected image clippings form the sports sections of newspapers that I find in coffee shops and on bus stop benches. There is an obvious pattern embedded in these stacks of newsprint that clutter the nooks and crannies of my studio.  Large men in uniform resembling super heroes, ballet dancers and religious icons all performing an intrepid choreography.   Typical action shots portraying player inches from the ground and seconds from impact signify strength and skill.  These compositions are constructed to captivate fans and support a spectacle.  However, I collect these photographs not because I follow the games or idolize the players but because they provide evidence of a heightened connection that the photographer has to his or her subject. The relationship between these two bodies is what holds the catalyst for me.  

It was this amusement that brought me to the arena itself.  Lingering over my collection, it occurred to me that whether you are at play or in competition, an athlete or a spectator, running solo or on a team the sports arena is a place specifically constructed to promote the human heart to beat faster. This body of work is an on going photographic expedition into the euphoria of the space itself as if it had a lasting beat of its own.  Considering my camera as a kind of drawing device, I went to the arena with the idea to render an architecture of distance and speed, defied mental and physical gravity, competition between color and light and the instances separating reflex and impact.