David Burnett has photographed the Olympic Summer Games every year since 1984—Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London; he’s made it to a few Winter Games as well. As a highly decorated photojournalist and co-founder of Contact Press Images, he has been free to skip recording the results, and instead can get creative with the magnificent displays of athleticism. “I have the luxury of never having been the photographer who was relied upon to get the winner in that victorious pose,” Burnett says. “So many photographers have great experience shooting those sports that I might only see once every four, or even twelve years. My mission, I feel, is to study the sport, the motion, the players and to get pictures that spectators may never witness by simply sitting there observing the games.” From that perspective, he can turn his camera on fellow photographers as they point their lenses at a Women’s 4x100m Relay in Atlanta or catch a diver in Sydney in the graceful but usually hidden plunge under the pool’s surface. An exhibition of his photos from the Olympics, “David Burnett: Man Without Gravity” opened this week at Anastasia Photo in New York City, and runs until August 14, just in time for the Rio Games.

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