American Sports, 1970

Coolly descriptive yet intensely engaging, American Sports, 1970 draws a sharp, disquieting portrait of the American social landscape at the height of the Vietnam War. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship shortly before the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, Tod Papageorge immediately realized that his ostensible subject - the phenomenon of professional sport in America - could not be understood apart from the bitter political, racial, and sexual struggles ignited by the war. Picture after picture in this book is electric with this realization: uniformed military men relax in the stands or parade on the field; cheerleaders rehearse under the eyes of police; a couple sprawl and embrace in the debris of the Indianapolis 500; and hundreds of fans are drawn in unsettling group portraits at the World Series, Cotton Bowl, and other classic American sporting events. Papageorge has palpably and eloquently apprehended the civic and psychic distress of the time on the faces of his subjects and in their gestures and interactions. This is a remarkable, unexpected body of work - published here for the first time - by a photographer and teacher who has shaped the creative efforts of many of the most influential American photographers of the past three decades.