June 2004 - Issue 6
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Annie Leibovitz's Olympic Portraits
The invitation by the Atlanta committee for the Olympic games to take
pictures of any aspect I liked of the 26th Olympiad to be held in Atlanta in
the summer of 1996, is the kind of assignment a photgrapher dreams about.
Not because I am a sports photographer but precisely because I am a sports
photographer. I am a portrait Photographer, a portrait photographer who has
always been more interested in what people do that in the way they look. But
what they do usually is reflected in the way they look. And there is nothing
people do which is more intensely reflected in how they look than athletics.
The energy, the concentration the discipline of sport is something
preeminently visual. The only activity that is comparable, in its sheer
visualness is dance.... and perhaps its my dance photography that has best
prepared me for this work
The pictures in this series are a selection of the photographs I took of
American athletes who were training to take part in the games in Atlanta. In
meets and competitions all over the country, the best athletes were testing
themselves, and being tested, as part of the process of qualifying for a
place on the American teams. My photographs were done in individual and
group sessions that I set up with the athletes. This gave me the opportunity
to depict movement close up, intimately - when movement was the subject. Of
course it wasn't always the subject. Each time I worked with an athlete I
had two possibilities: I could concentrate on the person (a portrait in the
more conventional sense) or I could concentrate on the sport. Sometimes I
was able to do both.
 Hockey |
 Synchronised Swimming |
 Soft Ball |
 Handball |
 Gymnastics |
 Basketball |
 Table Tennis |
 Aquatics |
 Fencing |
 Gymnastics |
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