THOMAS McGOVERN
"Hard Boys+Bad Girls"
"Hard Boys+Bad Girls"
Exhibition and Book Launch
May 1 - 29, 2010
Reception and Book Signing Red Carpet Event
Saturday, May 8, 6-10pm
HARD BOYS & BAD GIRLS is a photography book and exhibition about young people who live their fantasies of greatness through professional wrestling. Working mundane day jobs as truck drivers, cashiers and secretaries, these men and women seek to realize their goals of fame and super-stardom within the economically and socially depressed city of San Bernardino, California. The book is published by Schiffer Publishing and has a Foreword by renowned curator, Tim B. Wride, former Curator of Photography at LACMA and now Executive Director of the No Strings Foundation.
McGovern’s photographs are part documentary and part collaboration, demonstrating the grit and determination required to survive as a wrestler, along with the showmanship and keen strategy to be successful. There are portraits of scrawny kids trying hard to look tough as well as large and accomplished men and women who already are. The action shots reveal a depth of athleticism that the casual observer might overlook, and focus on the grappling hands, tortured expressions and outrageous characters. Ultimately, the pictures are authentic because we see beneath the subjects’ bravado and witness ambitious young people struggling to make their mark in a world where image rules.
Contrasting the carefully constructed identities in the pictures are interviews in which the subjects tell of their personal tragedies and triumphs and reveal their honest quest for success in a highly competitive and dangerous career.
Come meet some of the subjects in person at the exhibition opening, where costumed wrestlers will strut about and sign autographs and pose for pictures with fans.
Thomas McGovern’s photographs are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Griffin Museum of Photography, among others. His other books are Bearing Witness (to AIDS) (1999, Visual AIDS/A.R.T. Press) and Amazing Grace (2010, Parker Publishing). His photographs have appeared in the Village Voice, New York Times, New York Daily News, A&U Magazine. His art criticism has appeared in Afterimage, Art Issues, THE Magazine, Artweek and Art Papers magazine. McGovern is a professor of art at California State University, San Bernardino.
This exhibition is sponsored by:
IE Weekly
Freestyle Photographic Supply
May 1 - 29, 2010
Reception and Book Signing Red Carpet Event
Saturday, May 8, 6-10pm
HARD BOYS & BAD GIRLS is a photography book and exhibition about young people who live their fantasies of greatness through professional wrestling. Working mundane day jobs as truck drivers, cashiers and secretaries, these men and women seek to realize their goals of fame and super-stardom within the economically and socially depressed city of San Bernardino, California. The book is published by Schiffer Publishing and has a Foreword by renowned curator, Tim B. Wride, former Curator of Photography at LACMA and now Executive Director of the No Strings Foundation.
McGovern’s photographs are part documentary and part collaboration, demonstrating the grit and determination required to survive as a wrestler, along with the showmanship and keen strategy to be successful. There are portraits of scrawny kids trying hard to look tough as well as large and accomplished men and women who already are. The action shots reveal a depth of athleticism that the casual observer might overlook, and focus on the grappling hands, tortured expressions and outrageous characters. Ultimately, the pictures are authentic because we see beneath the subjects’ bravado and witness ambitious young people struggling to make their mark in a world where image rules.
Contrasting the carefully constructed identities in the pictures are interviews in which the subjects tell of their personal tragedies and triumphs and reveal their honest quest for success in a highly competitive and dangerous career.
Come meet some of the subjects in person at the exhibition opening, where costumed wrestlers will strut about and sign autographs and pose for pictures with fans.
Thomas McGovern’s photographs are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Griffin Museum of Photography, among others. His other books are Bearing Witness (to AIDS) (1999, Visual AIDS/A.R.T. Press) and Amazing Grace (2010, Parker Publishing). His photographs have appeared in the Village Voice, New York Times, New York Daily News, A&U Magazine. His art criticism has appeared in Afterimage, Art Issues, THE Magazine, Artweek and Art Papers magazine. McGovern is a professor of art at California State University, San Bernardino.
This exhibition is sponsored by:
IE Weekly
Freestyle Photographic Supply
