Sports Photography

In 1882 movement was attempted to be captured using a celluloid roll, using multiple images of an athlete running and shown on a loop to mimic motion. Throughout the 19th century, tennis to horse racing was captured as an image with the dynamism of the sporting world helping to propel developments in motion pictures. By the very end of that century, Kodak marketed their portable camera equipped with a roll of negative film and by 1896 the first Olympic Games to be photographed took place in Athens. As the 20th century progressed so did technological advances in sports photography, and as the Olympic Games still enraptured artists, they continued to chronicle the greatest athletes the world had ever seen. When the image of Bob Beamon was released of him smashing the long jump world record in 1968, it represented a new era of photography - capturing the moment in hyperrealism. Cameras may have developed exponentially since but the era of sports photography lives on. Dive into the likes of Slim Aarons and Isabelle Picarel whose works capture the spirit of sport.