Late afternoon in Rome in mid-May.
The Foro Italico hosts the Italian Open, where the gotha of the international tennis entertains the audience, while Piazza del Popolo a court where people are given, for free, access to pre-qualification matches, champions’ training sessions and exhibitions.
The stars have not yet come out and the athletes have not left their hotels, so in the meantime, young athletes are training in the hope that one day they will become the next emperors of Rome themselves.
I don’t like reading too much into the photographs I shoot. As in Bruce Lee’s philosophy ‘a punch is just a punch’, I think the same of photography. However, in this image I tried to capture three messages: ‘the ‘presence of absence’ —champions and stars being elsewhere while the young players train amid the indifference of passers-by— the ‘one day hope’ message —an athlete playing the court where he dreams of coming back as a major tennis star— or what tennis look like when played outside the traditional venues.
What I find interesting in this photo is that all these meanings are entirely made in the sense that the they are ‘imposed’, rather than being intrinsic to the photo. The only true matter was, initially, the compositional challenge: trying to take a meaningful shot from a very disadvantaged position.
Share this post:
Comments
No comments found