A good sports photograph is often measured by its level of peak action – and with the speed that technology moves these days, and as cameras get faster and things like remote cameras more readily available, there’s even more truth to this fact.
Anderson & Low’s new exhibition “RITUALS – Spiritual – Physical” at Throckmorton Fine Art is something poles apart from peak action photography. In fact it makes you look at sport photography from a different angle…
The duo (Jonathan Anderson & Edwin Low), for whom sport is more of a muse, have been working together since 1990 and what you’ll find here is a collection that is a greatest hits of several of their well received projects over the years. The work looks at human dreams, aspirations, hope, despair, endurance, determination and the perseverance of world-class athletes including those in the fields of gymnastics, surfing, and traditional Indian wrestling.
Included in the exhibition is their portfolio “X-PRINTS” which is drawn from their breakthrough projects and is made up of 10 platinum-palladium prints. The images include the series “Athletes”, “American Athletes” and “Gymnast”s combined with early key images of the process of sport and the abstracted classical ideal of the athlete, as well as studies of the personality, iconography and physiognomy of sport.
According to the duo: “In our work we are looking at that process of training – the vocabulary and syntax that each different sport requires, the different physiognomy that each sport demands, the different mental state that each sport needs, as well as their common elements. We are also very interested in the iconography of sport, going right back to the statues of ancient Greece and Rome, and those seminal depictions of the “sporting ideal” which can be seen in some of our early platinum prints.”
Anderson and Low were named the official artists for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and among other things have received complete, unrestricted, and uncensored access to work with elite Chinese Gymnasts training in Beijing. Their work resides in many public and private collections including those of MOMA, The Victoria & Albert Museum in London, The National Portrait Galleries of both the UK and Australia and many more.
—Samantha Reinders
RITUALS – Spiritual – Physical
Throckmorton Fine Art
Through November 16, 2019
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