Gladiatoren (Gladiators)

In 1974, Hannover hosted the Catch Wrestling World-Cup. A real sports fanatic, Joachim Giesel documented the event intensely with his camera. The photographs of the fights stand out from other purely documentarian or journalistic sports photographs through the use of innovative perspective. The author Lorenz Hafner speaks of Giesel as having the eye of a true Catch lover:

„The event of the Catch can only be captured so impressively in pictures by someone who, like the Hanoverian photographer Joachim Giesel, has immersed themself in the breathtaking world of Catch. On several march evenings I watched Giesel as he crouched at ringside with his camera, always on the lookout for new angles. He was the first photographer to mount his camera between the spotlights above the center of the ring and, with a remote shutter release, he took pictures like you’ve never seen before.“ – Lorenz Hafner

Giesel’s artistic aspirations play a key role in his Catcher pictures. The documentation Gladiatoren was created over the span of 22 match visits. Encased in a silver envelope are 18 photographs – selected from the hundreds of pictures that Giesel took of the Catchers. This portfolio was published in an edition of 100 and could be purchased for a nominal fee of 75 DM. The selected photographs show the catchers posing in the studio and in the ring. The focus is on the athlete’s impressive physicality, their strength and their full commitment in the ring. In contrast to this, Giesel also shows the Catcher’s vulnerability – in moments just before knockout, when the referee intervenes, or outside the ring in a state of pure exhaustion. Giesel also captures the athletes in brotherly embrace. In their entirety, the black and white photographs reveal the photographer’s sensitive view of the self-staging of the muscle-bound athletes. Giesel is also fascinated by the audience. Screaming housewives, intense gazes, the air electric. Giesel was particularly struck by the women around the ring who let themselves be drawn into the spell of the Catch’s display of male virility, prompting him to repeatedly turn his camera to the audience. He compiled these images under the title Kontraste.

Very clear parallels can be drawn to Giesel’s dance and theater photographs – here, too, the photographer mounts above the stage and here, too, he shows movements and physicality on stage in all their intensity, which he captures in dynamic snapshots.