OLYMPISM MADE VISIBLE

About the Project:

Olympism Made Visible is a global fine art photography initiative. At its core, it is an artistic interpretation of the IOC’s core values and their impact when sport is placed at the service of humankind through community-based development programs around the world. Five stories, five countries, five unique artistic visions of the Olympic ideals of justice, equity, service, and peace. This was a commissioned project that began in the summer of 2018 and launched with an exhibition in Buenos Aires, Argentina that year.

My Role:

The client commissioned me to bring their idea to life. As the Artistic Director, I was intimately involved with every step of the creative, strategic, production, and curatorial process. In the pre-production phase, I launched the project, defined the creative and visual direction, selected the artists for the focus areas, and worked with the local organizations to further understand their missions. During the production, I traveled with each of the photographers (almost 60,000 miles and five continents working with Vanessa Winship in Liverpool, Alex Majoli in Rio de Janeiro, Lorenzo Vitturi in Phnom Penh, Nico Krijno at three different refugee camps in Rwanda, and because of scheduling conflicts, Max Pinckers in Palau). I worked closely with each of the artists collaborating as we went on the creative direction, narrative structure, and conceptualization of their stories. The photographers’ challenge was to interpret the client’s mission from their distinctive creative perspective and tell these complex stories with nuance and depth. We wanted neither a traditional sport nor classical photojournalism approach to this work, rather we were seeking a creative interpretation with a very real narrative. As a curator, one of my challenges was to synthesize their distinct visual voices into one cohesive body of work that would live in symmetry with each other and contribute in telling a larger story of global development and social service. Once we were in the post-production phase I worked with the photographers on edits and storytelling structure and set about curating the exhibition and coordinating the huge logistical efforts of the many people involved from all corners of the globe (the client in Switzerland, the photographers, and their studios in England, Italy, South Africa and Belgium, the framers, art handlers and local production team in Argentina and the design agency in NYC). We installed the first exhibition in Buenos Aires in October 2018, just shy of five months from the launch of the project.