Trust the Process

Paralympics Wheelchair Basketball

Shout-out @Georgiarybanks (and everyone who tags me in photos), who sent over this gem by one of my favorite photographers, Naomi Baker.

This ended up being a fun process, so figured I’d spin up a quick post about it. First, it’s diagnosing what needs to be captured: overlapping circles, some of the lines that make up the wheelchairs, the wheels themselves, and the net, and then ideally the basketball. Whatever’s picked has to reflect the symmetry that makes up the essence of the photo’s beauty. It’s poetry in frozen motion, but with circles, which is fairly rare in sports outside of motorsports, and what makes this shot stand out. Four things came to mind when I saw it.

Joan Miró

Miró’s unique take on Surrealism often has circles & lines - earlier this year I used this piece, ‘L'Hypnotiseur,’ and there’s clearly some similar vibes.

Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky is famous for overlapping circles, as seen below in the aptly named ‘Several Circles,’ part of the Guggenheim’s collection.

Hilma af Klint

af Klint’s psychedelic and mystical approach often features circles, lines, as well as some of the blue/green background that’s featured in the photo, as in ‘No. 5, Group 3’ below.

This Piece below

Of the four things that came to mind, this was the only one that wasn’t an artist, but a specific work of art. This one (it’s Untitled) is part of the MoMA’s permanent collection, and is massive in person.

The colors, pattern, size; it’s just such an impressive and fun piece, and hard to forget. I realized this particular work wouldn’t fit for the photo (the colors are off), but started to do a deep dive on the artist, Atsuko Tanaka (who I hadn’t heard of until I looked up this piece), and had a good feeling that something in her catalog would work.

While she worked across different mediums (her wearable art is worth falling down a wormhole on), the overlapping circles + lines seen in the above piece seem to be her signature with paintings. She was under-appreciated in her time, which draws a parallel to the Paralympics, which only now seem to be getting the respect and coverage they deserve (shout-out NBC Sports & Olympics for having Gold Zone available). I spent a bit of time looking through Tanaka’s catalog, and found a section of a larger piece that captured the elements that I was looking for.

While it’s not exactly a 1:1 match, I think the spirit shines through, and I was happy with not only how it came out, but to learn about a new artist with a deep & interesting background.

-LJ