By Mara McGinnis
139 photographs spanning two centuries at Winter Garden
The mostly black-colored cover of the January 17, 1994 Sports Illustrated has a small window framing the distraught face of figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, who had been attacked at the Olympic trials. The text reads “Why Me?”
When Jane Gottesman, then a sports reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle, saw the cover, she was annoyed. She was also intrigued.
At the time, she was researching how the media portrays female athletes. The picture prompted her to get hold of every Sports Illustrated cover over a one-year period. She began with the previous swimsuit issue (1993) and didn’t stop collecting until the next one came out.
She discovered something interesting. Aside from Kerrigan, the only female athletes on the cover during that year were tennis players Monica Seles and Mary Pierce. Seles had just been stabbed and looked terrified. Pierce, whose father was abusive, had a hopeless, sad look on her face.
“These women were being featured not as great athletes but as victims, and that’s where the question — What does a female athlete look like? — came from,” said Gottesman. “I knew that they didn’t look like victims. They also didn’t look like vixens.”
Posing that question to hundreds of professional photographers, Gottesman spent the next seven years collecting images for “Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?” The book led to a traveling photo exhibit now on display at the World Financial Center thru June 6.
The photography exhibit, which has attracted more than a million visitors in eight cities since it’s debut in 2001 at the Smithsonian, features 139 color and black-and-white photographs. With co-curator (now husband) Geoffrey Biddle, Gottesman looked at more than 200,000 images and spent six months editing. The book, published in 2001 by Random House, features more than 180 photographs. It is now in it’s 5th printing and has sold between 50,000 and 100,000 copies, she said.
Biddle, a professional photographer, said that each photo had to pass both his and Gottesman’s approval.
“It had to speak to Jane’s understanding of and vision for the project. For me, it had to be a lasting photograph.”
The subjects of the photographs vary from Olympic stars to girls playing hopscotch or jumping rope in the street. They date from the late 19th century to the present, and are displayed according to five stages: “Get Ready” (one in this section is of a young woman ironing her uniform), “Start,” “Action,” “Finish” and “Aftermath.” The curators say this arrangement represents the arc of the athletic experience.
“When considered in terms of life stages, the various phases of the athletic experience symbolize determination, risk, effort, completion and satisfaction,” they explain.
While the images are not displayed chronologically, it’s impossible not to sense the historical struggle of women athletes. According to exhibit visitors Kate Neville and Melissa Ortuno (who describe themselves as “retired athletes”), one of the most striking photos is of Kathy Switzer finishing the Boston Marathon in 1967.
The first woman to run the race, Switzer entered using only her first initial. The men at the finish line are seen cheering, while the women have a blank look. Below the photo is a quote from Switzer: “Women were often the hardest people to win over in the battle for acceptance of women’s sports.”
Other well-known subjects include athletes Marion Jones, Chris Evert, Serena Williams, Tara Lipinski and Brandi Chastain. Chastain is on the cover of the book and is the first image in the exhibit. With her knees on the field, her arms flexed upward, her eyes closed, and her mouth open, Chastain celebrates the moment that the U.S. women’s soccer team won the World Cup in 1999.
Some of the photographers represented are Mary Ellen Mark, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Tina Barney and Pulitzer Prize winners Annie Wells, April Saul, Melissa Farlow and Rick Rickman among others.
But not all of the pictures are of intense action or victory. Taken both on and off the playing field, many are unexpected such as those of women consoling each other, stretching at the gym, doing the jitterbug, and roller-skating.
One “Aftermath” image shows a group of young women players, most of whom have their arms crossed in front of their chest and are looking down at the gym floor. No one is holding the trophy; rather it stands on the floor in front of them. It’s titled “Winners — Second Place.”
While this particular photo captures the devastation of defeat, every image captures “something essential about the athletic experience,” said Biddle. He said another component of the project, the “Game Face Educational Outreach Program” offered free by Mass Mutual Financial Group, is in about 200 New York City public schools and in thousands of classrooms nationwide.
“The success of this project has proven that it means something to women,” said Gottesman.
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