Throughout history, artists have found inspiration in the primal nature of boxing, wrestling, and bu

Throughout history, artists have found inspiration in the primal nature of boxing, wrestling, and bullfighting. Sculptures and reliefs dating from antiquity highlight the beauty and strength of boxers and wrestlers, often naked or semiclothed. Today, it is sports photographers who have taken up this universal subject—two bodies,little equipment—that was so fundamental to classical sculpture. The best photographers capture the physicality and the psychology behind these matches.Boxing, wrestling, and bullfighting have deepliterary and artistic traditions. Photographers who would never stand on a sideline go willingly, week after week, to the ring.Howard Schatz spent the first half of his professional life as an ophthalmologist, and then, at the age of fifty-five, changed careers and became a professional photographer. He has developed ways of showing motion that bring greater understanding to human physiology, similar to Dr. Étienne Jules Marey and his assistant George Demeny. But the priorities are flipped. Marey and Demeny sought knowledge first and beauty was a by-product. Schatz is the consummate artist, seeking beauty and aesthetic expression before all else.In his photograph of the Argentine middleweight boxer Sergio Martínez, Schatz used multiple stroboscopic flashes to capture the many phases of the jump rope in a single frame, while one rear synchronized flash freezes his body. Like a snake losing its skin, Martínez’s hands and feet seem to peel away. Howard Schatz (American, born 1940). Boxing Study 1805 Sergio Martinez, 2010. Photograph by Howard Schatz from At the Fights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing. Courtesy of the Staley-Wise Gallery, New York #whoshotsports -- source link

More pics about