Of silhouettes, bodies and light

The world of long-dis­tance run­ning has remained alien to me through­out my life. I was nev­er addict­ed to pain and the joy of the often rumored adren­a­line rush was always denied to me. The first time I was inter­est­ed in long-dis­tance run­ning was with Alan Sillitoe’s sto­ry, The Lone­li­ness of the Long Dis­tance Run­ner, and Tony Richardson’s film adap­ta­tion of the sto­ry. We read the sto­ry at some point in Eng­lish class, and then we saw the film too. I know I liked both. It was a pleas­ant encounter with long-dis­tance run­ning that could be expe­ri­enced sit­ting. I think we were told at the time that the long-dis­tance run at Sil­li­toe was a metaphor for life, maybe that’s the way it is, although at most a metaphor for a life full of agony and pri­va­tion, as the first-per­son nar­ra­tor seemed to endure.

My next note­wor­thy encounter with long-dis­tance run­ning took place many years lat­er: in Berlin. There, the run­ning route of the annu­al marathon does­n’t go far past our apart­ment. And every now and then I would vis­it the track and watch the run­ners. Almost forced, because a marathon route rep­re­sents an almost insur­mount­able obsta­cle. The nev­er-end­ing mass­es of run­ners keep you from get­ting to the seem­ing­ly so close oppo­site side of the street. A marathon run is a traf­fic-tech­ni­cal obsta­cle, in order to get from a to b, it requires inge­nious plan­ning and in-depth knowl­edge of the local con­di­tions. So now I stood on the side of the road and watched the thou­sands of run­ners who all had one goal: to suc­cess­ful­ly cov­er the 42.195 kilo­me­ters. I looked into the faces of the run­ners, watched their pos­ture while run­ning, tried to assess how much some of them were already reach­ing their lim­its. But what sur­prised me most was that the marathons did­n’t seem like a lone­ly, soli­tary under­tak­ing, as I had actu­al­ly expect­ed. The run­ners seemed to expe­ri­ence a com­mu­ni­ty expe­ri­ence, they ran togeth­er, peo­ple talked to each oth­er, waved to the audi­ence, and wore fun­ny cos­tumes.

And at some point I start­ed tak­ing pho­tos at the Berlin Marathon. Some­how I had in mind to depict the pain, the suf­fer­ing, but also the joy and com­mu­nal expe­ri­ence of the run­ners. But actu­al­ly I did­n’t real­ly suc­ceed – and it soon seemed too bor­ing to me. But then I found the place where the fire brigade had installed hoses that were used to spray water onto the run­ning track. The run­ners could run under the jet of water and cool off. And instead of doc­u­ment­ing the suf­fer­ing and joy of the run­ners, I tried to give my pic­tures an abstract, alien­at­ed impres­sion – and that means for the next three hours dur­ing which I did­n’t move. What I mean by that is the fol­low­ing:

First: The splash­ing water, the spots of light and the shad­ows leave a graph­ic, arti­fi­cial effect, cre­ate abstract struc­tures. The drops and splash­es that sparkle in the light, the shad­ows of the feet and the body cre­ate an unre­al, graph­ic visu­al lan­guage.

Sec­ond: The sil­hou­ettes of the bod­ies in the back­light look like styl­ized arche­types of run­ners. The frozen ges­tures – the head thrown back, the tense mus­cles, the arms out­stretched in the air, the hands turned towards the water – all these are more super­fi­cial ele­ments that tell noth­ing real­ly about the hard­ship of phys­i­cal exer­tion.

This abstract char­ac­ter of the pho­tos helped me to real­ize: marathon and pho­tog­ra­phy rep­re­sent, so to speak, two dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed con­cepts: move­ment on the one hand – freez­ing one move­ment on the oth­er. Dura­tion on the one hand – frac­tion of a sec­ond on the oth­er. Phys­i­cal­i­ty on the one hand – pure­ly exter­nal aes­thet­ics on the oth­er. When we look at the pic­tures, we con­tin­ue the move­ments in our minds: the foot is about to touch the ground – the water is about to splash up – the run­ner will put one foot behind the oth­er, many thou­sands more times. The pic­ture shows sta­t­ics, our per­cep­tion, but our expe­ri­ence expects move­ment.

My pic­tures tell noth­ing about pain, noth­ing about suf­fer­ing, noth­ing about hap­pi­ness, noth­ing about the adren­a­line rush. I have come no clos­er to under­stand­ing what makes run­ning a marathon so fas­ci­nat­ing. But I have pro­duced a series of pho­tos which, in their alien­ation, in their abstrac­tion, rep­re­sent a gim­mick with the visu­al ele­ments of a marathon run. After all.

Jür­gen Bür­gin (2013)