Michael Czeiszperger's photostream  

Lately I've been trying to photograph small moments, which are the antithesis of the decisive moment, a rejection of Cartier-Bresson’s definition of what’s important, instead embracing the small, quiet, unimportant moments that actually define us.

To illustrate the small moment let us consider the college-level women’s gymnastics I photograph every spring during competition season. Taking a few thousand photographs and reducing them to less than fifty is a daunting task, one that requires thought about the nature of gymnastics as a sport and the nature of the individual. Having photographed five seasons now, I’ve put a lot of thought into what makes these young women unique. What is it about each gymnast individually that defines them apart from every other competitor who is trying to replicate the exact same move?

The first instinct at a sports event is to photograph the decisive moment, the big play that wins or loses a game. At least with gymnastics, though, the big moves are not that interesting once you’ve seen hundreds. Everyone is trying to perfect the moves, and the result is a pervading sameness that takes away from the supreme difficulty. When something is done well, even something that is extremely difficult, it looks easy, diluting the impact of the image.

As a result, instead of concentrating on gymnastics as a sport, I concentrate on each individual, both players and coaches, as mere people who only incidentally happen to be doing extraordinary things.

Imagine an elaborately made up young woman approaching the uneven bars. She is wearing foundation and mascara and lipstick and glitter and her hair is done up in intricate ways with braids and ribbons. She approaches the uneven bars and examines her hands for almost a minute. She is just standing there, mostly still but for one thing: her jaw is moving slowly back and forth until she sends forth a big glob of spit into her hands and rubs them together to get the right consistency. A small moment.

Imagine a coach running up to a competitor who has just blown her routine at precisely the wrong moment, and putting his hand lightly on her shoulder and whispering something comforting in her ear. A small moment.

Imagine a group of women around the chalk box, each rubbing the white powder into their hands, and one makes a circle with her fingers and blows a steady obnoxious stream into her teammate’s faces and laughs.

Image a women waiting for her turn on the balance bar. She is staring at the floor, turned away from the bar, turned away her teammates and coaches, and away from the crowd. Her gaze suddenly drops, and for a fleeting private second her face reveals the tension and the fear that comes from doing something extremely dangerous in front of thousands of people.

You'll notice that few of my pictures have titles. The main reason for that is I want each viewer to have the opportunity to react in their own way without being told how to feel. Adding a title becomes a game where the viewer glances at an image, reads the title, and then tries to "get it", as if the picture is a test question with only one answer. For example, if you look at a picture of a boy crying, imagine the changes in your response if the title was "Dropped Candy" vs. "Grandparent Died". In both cases the image is exactly the same, but our reactions and emotions are not. The logical extension of having a title is adding a narrative, which is the purview of photojournalism. There is an art to telling a story with pictures, but that is the opposite of what I do. My goal is to have each picture survive on its own visual merits without having to rely on any one context.