Boxing

ANOTHER WORLD, PORTRAITS

My initial involvement of the project began with an evening spent at the South Wye Police Boxing Academy; a place I had never previously visited. From the moment I arrived I was captivated in watching and experiencing this alternative world that I knew nothing about; this was the first shoot location and I was already learning so much. Whilst there, we closely interacted with four boxers who were happy to be involved with the project. It was at this stage that we decided we needed to incorporate a uniformity across all the images to fairly exhibit the contrasts in all of the different young people. To achieve this, we fixed on every portrait being from shoulder height upwards with an appropriate background relevant to each specific young person and their lifestyle. In the background of these images for example, you can see the boxing rings where different training exercises were taking place. An important aspect of these images is that nothing is staged, these boxers were all enduring a high intensity training session whilst we took their portraits meaning we gained a closer insight into the normality of their time spent there. It was from this that we learned it was more appropriate to photograph each individual using a smart phone as oppose to a larger digital camera which is equally as efficient but less intimidating to the participant. 

If you’d like to learn more about the P.O.V. project, you can visit the Rural Media website here