Nearly all champions of life have had parents who accompanied them when they were just starting, when they were not so expert and needed endless hours repeating the same movement, images recorded forever in amateur photos and even videos. And then the competitions that inevitably engaged whole Sundays and days of rest. It happened to me.
Little by little the children become one with the sport, till at some point you realize that your child has begun to walk with his own legs, to use a mostly incomprehensible technical language, and to have developed an identity separate from being the parent.
Then comes adolescence and something changes. Not all athletes become champions and many adolescents leave the sport and their dreams of becoming a champion. Sometimes it is a liberation but it is sometimes also a pain.
We had spent hours with other parents in our own emotional wavelengths, we'd bask in dreams of glory and suddenly we have to reinvent a life of our own, no longer having the predominant role of parent. The hope, then, is that the days spent watching the kids become accomplished may be useful for them to become "champions of life".
What remains of all this time spent in small-town races and of all of these emotions?
The photos! These are photos taken by experts, "multiple shots" that have no soul and capture only the technical aspects and can be understood only by insiders (if they have any interest at all among the millions of similar shots). For us as parents, these were only "costs" and we have always preferred amateur shots that we captured ourselves with our smartphones.
Yet for some time now the sports world has been different, especially for lovers of the equestrian. It has been ‘enriched’ with a facebook page in which are presented unusual shots in which the protagonists are always horses and riders, in which great importance is given to the poetry of the emotions that vibrate around these events.
There are the riders with unusual looks, judges engrossed in the calculations, the public looking amazed as the riders pass at the speed of a champion, and moments of complicity between young students and their teachers.
Much of the credit for these photos that bring life to the photo belongs to Massimo Argenziano, a photographer who at the beginning was the father of a little girl who loved horses (and who is now a champion).Massimo’s craft was the world of art photography and artists. His experience from studying how to create non-trivial shots that valued the emotions enabled him to create images that could enchant not just the rider but also the parents – he developed this special sensitivity.
Seeing these photos I felt nostalgia for the hours spent with friends watching the children grow up with equestrian sport and I relived the best moments of the emotions I left behind. I would go to the fields to watch the other young people grapple with the trials of the races and feel the adrenaline of the excited animals coming from that of children.
I realized that this human side of the sport is what brings people to equestrian and other sports events and increases the number of visitors to events that otherwise are often attended only by the families of athletes in the race.
Massimo sets an example for many other photographers who at this moment are recording moments in the sporting lives of children without understanding how to inject the emotion surrounding the budding champions of life.
Love is not seen, but we as parents can perceive it in the photographs!
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