Because the 2024 Summer time Olympics ceremony kicks off and we wait with bated breath to see what this 12 months’s competitors holds, a few of the athletes themselves are proud to current the outcomes of their very own artistic output in an exhibition on the Palais de Tokyo. On view at some stage in the video games (August 11), the Olympian Artists Programme exhibition contains art work by seven worldwide athletes, together with French fencing champion Enzo Lefort’s stylized portraits of his nationwide Olympian and Paralympian teammates.
Lefort, a three-time Olympic fencer from French Guiana whose staff medaled gold and silver in Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro respectively, picked up the digital camera in 2017 after connecting with numerous photographers all through his sports activities profession. Turning the lens again on his colleagues throughout all sports activities disciplines, Lefort is displaying a sequence titled Olympic Faces: One French Staff — a testomony to the range of athletes united within the aim to win gold for his or her nation.
The photographer’s newest sequence is an growth of an earlier undertaking, a photograph e book known as Behind the Masks (2020) that he labored on amid the postponement of the 2020 Summer time Olympics as a result of coronavirus pandemic, consisting of portraits and element photographs of his fencing teammates. With an eye fixed for the melding of cultures and geographic origins which have rounded out his perspective, Lefort has mentioned that he “wouldn’t be the person [he is] now with out experiencing this variety.”
Along with portraiture, the athlete additionally captures candid, architectural, and panorama scenes, and has additionally labored on visuals for social media and advertising campaigns for his companion’s Kitesy Martin jewellery and equipment model.
“Pictures helps me to precise my artistic aspect exterior fencing,” Lefort mentioned.
See extra photos from Olympic Faces: One French Staff beneath.
