Masters shooter Angela Jimenez gets love from UK newspaper
American Angela Jimenez, an art photographer who focuses on geezers, is back in the news. She’s featured in The Independent. This nice little story starts out by featuring M95 sprinter Manuel Gonzal Munoz. Reporter Adam Jacques writes: “Nor is he the only nonagenarian athlete out there: almost 50 competed in last year’s track-and-field world championships … and there are thought to be around 9,000 male and female senior athletes who compete at meets globally.” I think that figure is closer to 90,000. Whatever. At least Angela has her say: “I’ve always been interested in projects linked with the human body, especially those dealing with subcultures that challenge visual stereotypes.” We learn that she “usually shoots digitally but for ‘Racing Age’ she borrowed an old-fashioned Hasselblad medium-format film camera: “My idea was that this camera was like the athletes’ bodies – slower and harder to move, a little harder to use.”
Tip for shooting masters: Get way low and tilt camera up. We look studlier.
The story continues:
Her first Masters track-and-field meet, in Kentucky, hooked the 39-year-old, and she began to attend meets across America and around the world. What she found surprised her. “People in their seventies and eighties tend to be seen as more sedentary and disengaged, but these participants were as competitive as any young person.”
One such subject was the Californian heptathelete Johnnye Valien, who was 82 when Jimenez first met her (she’s now in her late eighties and still competing). Capturing her sinew-straining efforts in disciplines such as javelin, shot put and even hurdles struck a chord with the photographer. “I felt her focus, her intense competitive spirit.”
Enthusiasts such as Valien and Munoz are part of a small army of older athletes who have the means and desire to “make this what they do in retirement”. It’s an indication, too, of how steady improvements in health and nutrition and increased leisure time have produced a corps of elderly fitness obsessives able to perform physical feats previously unheard of (the world outdoor record for 70- to 75-year-old men for 100m is 12.77 seconds).
Nevertheless, it’s impossible to ignore the changes that occur to muscle and bone density as we age: “When you see someone whose body appears old and frail, doing really physically exerting things such as pole vaulting, it’s kind of scary,” says Jimenez. Munoz is a case in point: at full tilt, his 100m dash clocks in at 46 seconds.
It’s proven a wake-up call to Jimenez: “It’s become a reminder to me to live more healthily, and always keep my body moving. I think everyone wants to know that getting old and weak is not the only possibility.” Her medal-winning subjects would certainly agree.
For more: angelajimenezphotography.com
4 Responses
I wonder if Angela can take a good video of me running.I haven’t had a good video of me taken in the last ten years. They all seems to be shot in slow motion.
Send me a video, Nolan. I have tools to speed up tape!
I caught up with Angie at an Armory meet last year as we supported our U. Penn Track & Field team. She was a great athlete herself while competing at U. Penn. I’m still trying to get her to join us back on the oval and in the field! 🙂 She’s doing GREAT work to showcase Masters trackletes!
Thanks so much Ken! And to Ruth Greenfield-Webster, my fellow Penn track alum for letting me know about this post:) Nolan, that is such a cool idea. I have thought about that….I am interested in making it back out to some meets this year. Any and all suggestions about good ones coming up are much appreciated! Also, I was trying to track down Johnnye Valien the athlete from California. Anyone know here whereabouts?
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