Who are you calling old?
David Burnett
As a photographer my work has taken me across the world, covering leading international events for more than fifty years. But it was in the United States that I discovered sports competitions for seniors, both men and women, with determined amateurs, some who started competing after they retired, and former athletes too old to enter major events. From the age of 55 to 90+ they all have the same spirit of solidarity and the same ambition to stand up to the march of time.
I quickly realized just how much I had in common with them: loving sport, feeling the appeal of competition, and gradually moving into a new stage of life. Since 1984 I have covered all the Summer Olympics, carting huge piles of photographic equipment, which is a sporting exercise in itself. This time I chose a lighter option, taking shots without cropping them, and only using digital cameras and lenses to produce slightly different formats.
Preview
As age moves onto “old age” and “grand old age,” a whole section of the population is partitioned off and hidden from mainstream society in its pursuit of eternal youth. The pandemic has provided a dramatic reminder of the existence of senior citizens, focusing on their vulnerability and need for protection, offering a forceful challenge to widespread perceptions of old age. But are these senior citizens so fragile? I can show that it is not the case for all of them. Of course the sportsmen and women I have photographed may have their wrinkles, hunched backs, excess weight, stiffness and misshapen hands, their performances may not be spectacular, but their life force is intact and their competitive spirit is fiery, for the pleasure of the effort and the results achieved, no matter how modest.
Marsh Welsh is 95 and still playing ice hockey. One of his younger team mates is full of admiration, stating that anyone who had seen him at the age of 80 would have sworn that he was on wings.
Silver-haired sport is a different example. Staying in good physical condition will help maintain health, and makes the final stages of life look very different. Doing this story in the United States I could find an outstanding range of sports, so could then show a wide range of people from different backgrounds, all coming together regardless of their origins, united in their aspiration to go beyond their limits.
Humanity and rights are central to my photography and I try to convey these values to prompt a better understanding of the world. In these rousing pictures of senior citizens I see a form of hope, hope in our ability to develop and to make achievements at any age. Here is a source of inspiration for millions of people, from any background.
We can quote Robert Marchand, the Frenchman acclaimed as the “world’s oldest racing cyclist” who set the record for the over-105 category (and who died in May this year at the age of 109). “All records are beaten one day. The hardest thing is to live to be a hundred.” But we can always try.
David Burnett
