1905 Building

The fascinating worlds of sports and photography were the focus of this major exhibition, This Sporting life, 1878–1991, an official event of the International Cultural Festival, World University Games Buffalo ’93, “A Celebration of People and Cultures.”

Organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the exhibition featured nearly 190 black-and-white and color photographs of amateur, recreational and professional sports spanning almost 125 years of photography in the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union. It examined the cultural phenomenon of sports — the fans, the venues and the pageantry as well as the action and the athletes. Luminaries of the sports world, in action and repose, were featured in the exhibition. Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Michael Jordan, Wilma Rudolph and Babe Ruth are among the well-known figures whose photographs were on view.

Compelling works by classic photographic masters such as Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Lee Friedlander and Eadward Muybridge were featured, as were notable contemporary works by John Baldessari, Martine Barrat, Coreen Simpson, and Bruce Weber, among others. The genre of sports journalism was explored through recent and vintage images from the archives of Sports Illustrated, Life, and other publications.

The wide-ranging activities in the photographs include football, basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, track and field, boxing, gymnastics, auto racing, and other sporting pursuits such as billiards, skiing, running, and fishing. In addition to examining the athletes and the action, the exhibition featured photographs of the fans, the playing fields, arenas and stadiums, which are integral to the total sports experience. Through this comprehensive survey of the many aspects of sports photography, This Sporting Life also revealed some of the broader implications of the role of sports in modern culture.

This exhibition was organized by Ellen Durgan, Chief Curator of Education at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.