"Ringer 2"

gelatin silver print, selenium toned

signed, dated, titled and numbered (pencil) on verso

While a woman’s body certainly has an erotic component that is important to heterosexual men, I find the male nude much more visually interesting because of its muscular structure.
In 2004, I was invited to contribute photographs to an exhibition called “Sport Eros Kunst”. Each participant was given the opportunity to choose a sport, and I quickly decided on wrestling. Martin Schlagenhaufen, Michael Prenner, Horst Mahn and Norbert Simnovcic agreed to wrestle for my shots.
Things got interesting when it came to capturing the throws used in the match. The move happened at lightning speed, and I had no control over the resulting image when I released the shutter. It was a guessing game and I photographed “blindly”, only selecting the right image with a look at the contact print created after the fact.
In contrast to the dynamic shots of wrestlers in action, there are also images in which the wrestlers, powerfully wedged together, are captured in a moment of apparent stillness. In some cases, I asked the wrestlers to pause for a moment. This gave me more control over the resulting image and allowed me to realize my envisioned image of very muscular men, powerfully interlocked.
(Fritz Simak)