True that boxing stills provides a way for inner city kids, and is a better route than drugs or street violence. There's a great work ethic involved in boxing; sometimes this is overlooked; also, not all pro fighters wind up punch drunk or broke. The structure and discipline in boxing reaps its own rewards in life. And, it is important for the aspiring young boxers out there to realize, in some ways, on an international scale, boxing has never been bigger. Good luck competitors!
I have been photographing boxers, gyms and boxing tournaments for the last two years. Much of what Fink found remains true. Boxing is still a way up and out for many inner city kids. It helps them avoid the lure of gangs and drugs. And there is a kindness blended with the violence -- boxers support one another, spray water into each other's mouths, help take each other's gloves off. And trainers sacrifice time, money and sometimes even family to help the young pugilists. Larry Fink's photos are an inspiration as they tell all of those stories in a manner that brings a viewer closer even than being there. Hope I can get to PA to see the prints. The book, which I have, doesn't quite do them justice from what I can see here.
This work reminds us to look for revelatory, small resonant moments everywhere. Larry’s masterful sense of how human beings share culture infuses these images. They tell stories of insiders. Even the solitary portraits are images of people who are a part of something bigger. They are individuals in the belly of a whale.
Typing this right now this hit me hard. I deeply aspire to the humanist viper vision that this photographer brings to the world. He lets us look closely at what it feels to be deeply enmeshed in something, a sport, a family, a protest, Hollywood. His subjects are deeply familiar with the hows and whys of the rituals of their world and deeply almost meditatively involved in their practice when Larry just plucks one or two out with his flash, frozen in amber for our study. His skills of distillation rival any chemist. Here he says. Here it is, this gesture is the love, here is pride, over here anticipation. He asks us to pay attention. Don’t sleepwalk through life. Look around damn it. It is all beautiful, rich, fragile, moving even corrupt and vile. This is the life we have. Right in front of our noses every minute. This is the garden.
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Mr. Finks timeless images are a tribute to American art. Great angles fresh POV's, the man is an artist. Look for his other work it is equally inspiring.
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