"There never seems to be a wide range of emotional
definitions of men. And I think in wrestling you really
see so many different emotions, so many different reactions
and interactions."
"...I think wrestlers really do feel like it’s
a kind of battle in a real old-fashioned sense. It’s
a duel, you know it goes way back. It’s not about a
lot of uniforms and pads."
"I’m looking for the moment before the guy goes
out there and he's warming up. The moment when he comes
off, either exhilarated because he won or devastated because
he lost."
"A theme of twinship has always run through my work,
of people that look alike. And that was another reason I
was drawn to wrestling because I feel like wrestlers look
a certain way."
"I like devastation. I like exhaustion. I really like
seeing someone that I know can’t barely get up."
"I think a lot of people see their own struggles as
teenagers in the pictures. They see that transition from
adolescent to grownup to adult."
You've been photographing wrestlers
for several years now. Where do you see this project going?
SCHORR:
I’m working on a comprehensive
study of amateur wrestling, which is Folk Style. I’m
doing Folk Style and Freestyle. Greco-Roman—I haven’t
really come across that yet. I won’t say I won’t
do it, but I’m not at the moment doing it. I basically
want to make a book that documents every facet of the experience.
Victory, defeat, blood, battered egos, humiliation. The guy
that wasn’t supposed to win that wins, the guy that was
supposed to win but doesn’t win. The way the coaches
interact with the players. The way practice partners work
together.
I want to show the whole temperature because, and I can only
approach it as a woman, but for me, from the outside, masculinity
has been depicted in very black and white terms. There never
seems to be a wide range of emotional definitions of men.
And I think in wrestling you really see so many different
emotions, so many different reactions and interactions. I
think there’s a romantic side of it for me because it’s
a sport that’s slowly being outmoded and outdated. Outmoded
because of Title Nine (or whatever the women’s sports
legislation has been) and a lot of wrestling programs are
cancelled. Politically, I don’t take a side because obviously
I’m all for every woman’s sport possible. But wrestling
is a sport where people don’t go and see it and it survives
sometimes because a lot of college wrestlers will volunteer
coaching. It’s a very small world. And so I wanted to
make a book that really tells people all about that world
because I’m not sure it will be here in twenty years.
And the book is called "Wrestlers Love America."
ART:21:
Why is that the title?
SCHORR:
When I went to Wisconsin there
was a guy wrestling who had a t-shirt on, a white t-shirt
and it said, “Wrestlers Love America,” and then
it says “We Support Desert Storm.” It was from that
Desert Storm time and it had the American flag and stuff on
it. So obviously the guy looks like he’s just come out
of a battlefield. He’s bloody and he’s soaking wet.
If you saw his head you would be scared, you would go running
in the other direction. It’s so monstrous. But I loved
the idea that they found a way to pair themselves up with
this, and I think that in some way, in their mind, they saw
themselves too as some sort of political underdog. They wanted
to align themselves with the idea of fighting for their country.
And I think wrestlers really do feel like it’s a kind
of battle in a real old-fashioned sense. It’s a duel,
you know it goes way back. It’s not about a lot of uniforms
and pads. It’s mano a mano. That image always sticks
in my head as the intensity of wrestling, and so it titled
the book.
ART:21:
How is the process of making
the wrestling pictures different from, say, the military uniform
or Helga pictures?
ART:21:
It’s completely different.
This is the project where I just go and throw myself into
it. I don’t think about anything. Whatever I’m drawn
to I run to. I don’t have any responsibility to set anything
up. It’s so stressful because you’re dancing...I’m
literally dancing in between thirty pairs of guys. But it’s
so relaxing because it’s simply about eye and hand all
the time.
ART:21:
What was it like taking pictures
at the West Point match?
SCHORR:
West Point was difficult because
it was a quad meet. And I was there to support West Point
so I told Coach Barbie, you know, "I’m rooting for
West Point, but I’m going to be shooting other guys."
At matches I’m not really looking for the pin. If I get
it that’s a bonus, but it’s so fast and it may be
across the room from you. You get it if it’s in front
of you. I think I’m looking for introspection. I’m
looking for the moment before the guy goes out there and he's
warming up. The moment when he comes off, either exhilarated
because he won or devastated because he lost. I’m looking
for anyone that’s bleeding. Anyone that’s been beaten
up a bit.
A theme of twinship has always run through my work, of people
that look alike. And that was another reason I was drawn to
wrestling because I feel like wrestlers look a certain way.
I meet guys sometimes and I’ll just say, "Oh did
you wrestle in high school?" And eight times out of ten
I’m right. I can just tell a wrestler. And I’ve
grown to love that face. And so I’m looking for guys
that fit that pattern. I’m looking for this tribe of
people.
ART:21:
What are those facial characteristics?
SCHORR:
Usually their ears get a little
smaller as time goes by and the ridge starts to come out of
their forehead. They start to get a bit more of a heavy brow.
The nose is either pushed up or it’s pushed down. For
me they’re really beautiful, but they’re definitely
unusual looking. I remember that even about guys in my high
school. The guys that wrestled looked different than the other
guys. They weren’t the same kind of sports hero, but
they were sportsmen.
Sometimes I’m drawn to someone for a haircut. I’ll
go up to a guy with a crew cut and just start talking to him
or I’ll go up to a guy with a black eye and I’ll
ask to take his picture. Part of it for me is that I really
love the interaction. I really love talking to them about
what their routine is like or what their workout was like.
I was really curious when talking to the Citadel guys and
the West Point guys. I wanted to know what was more difficult:
wrestling or basic training? I remember the Citadel guys in
unison said "Wrestling!" And I thought, well god,
they have such an advantage over the rest of the cadets because
they already know what it’s like to be tortured.
ART:21:
Do you think being a woman makes
it easier for you to approach the wrestlers when taking a
picture?
SCHORR:
It’s still really difficult.
As much as you explain to someone that you want to show all
sides of it, no one who lost wants a flash in their face.
Some guys are fine about it and some guys get really upset.
I took a picture of a Franklin and Marshal guy who had lost
and he was upset. He was like, "Hey, I just lost my match."
And I feel terrible because I always feel like photography’s
an intrusion. Photographers walk around with huge guilt complexes
because they always feel like they’re pushing in and
stealing something. Or they’re intruding or they’re
misrepresenting. But later I went over to him and I said,
"Look, you know, I just wanted to let you know I was
really sorry that I was in your face." And he said, "Oh
no, I understand, sorry, I just lost the match and I felt
bad, but take whatever pictures you want." That for me
is a key wrestler personality. Like if they were unfriendly,
they’re sorry about it because basically they want people
watching. I think wrestlers are into the project because they’re
happy someone cares and it’s not just about the Army-Navy
football game.
But I think that having a woman approach them is different.
Most of the people in the wrestling world are guys. I think
that they’re not sure what motivates me, but they’re
flattered and they’re happy. And women don’t take
up as much space, so I seem to float in. And I also think
that I don’t offer up any competition. Although whenever
I’m in practice I have these incredible urges to just
throw down, you know, just get into the position. When I did
wrestling in high school—and I should preface this by
saying that we had like three days where girls had to do wrestling
cause guys were doing wrestling—I hated it. It was humiliating
and it was embarrassing and the contact is much too close,
which is why I really admire what they do because I think
they get past certain stereotypes.
ART:21:
What do you like most about the
wrestlers?
SCHORR:
I like devastation. I like exhaustion.
I really like seeing someone that I know can’t barely
get up. The thing about a wrestling practice is, in a good
school like Blair, the coach will get every last bit of energy
out of you and then you’re just deflated. And there’s
a peacefulness in that moment that I really love, to see someone
who’s just used their entire body. For me it’s all
performance, it’s all dance. Particularly wrestling practice.
It’s about choreography because there are particular
moves. There’s many of them and they put them in certain
orders. And they do certain moves with names and everyone
knows those moves. So instead of a plié, it’s
a single leg or something. I love watching them perform these
movements and in an extremely graceful way.
On the one hand it’s extremely macho, extremely masculine.
Extremely brutal. I’ve seen people really get hurt. And
at the same time it’s about dance and it’s about
fluidity. It’s about grace. And it’s the one place
where you see that. People say, "Oh, football is graceful,"
but I don’t think football is graceful.
ART:21:
How do you think the general
public sees these wrestling images?
SCHORR:
I think they see all of the
great themes packed in. They see youth and they see triumph
and they see tension and they see sexuality. People bring
to it what they want. When it’s in the wrestling domain
people only see the moves, they only see the singlets. They
only see what they recognize. They don’t bring anything
else to it, I think. And I think that when people see it in
a gallery, they’re being told, "You can look for
other things. You can look beyond the surface of the picture."
And I think a lot of people see their own struggles as teenagers
in the pictures. They see that transition from adolescent
to grownup to adult. I think they see someone living life
in a way that maybe they don’t any longer. I think they
see kids that are doing something extreme with their life
that takes incredible determination. And so I hope that it’s
inspiring. And I hope it’s scary. I mean it’s supposed
to be scary as well. They’re warriors after all.
The earlier work was more about that. The earlier work was
much more about them being warriors and about them being,
in a sense, my army and a barricade between me and my audience
somehow. And I think the more recent wrestling pictures have
a lot more to do with the relationship between the figure
and the field. And movement and a more esoteric or metaphysical
relationship of the wrestler to his own body.
ART:21:
When you show the pictures how
are they installed?
SCHORR:
The first show I did was called
"Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky," based obviously
on the great Jimi Hendrix. And, like I said, it was about
building a barricade. It was about coming in with all these
really tough guys on the walls and they were going to dare
people to confront them. I felt very aggressive and they were
representing that aggressiveness. I wanted them to be literally
breaking out of the gallery. It was mainly portraits of wrestlers
and a few guys from track and field and one or two just regular
guys. It was the first show I had done that had much less
of a conceptual
framework. It was more portraiture and just letting the faces
tell the story.
The second show I did was called "Wrestlers Love America"
and it was a sort of collaboration
between my father and myself. My father was a muscle car photographer
and magazine publisher in the ’60s and ’70s and
’80s. And so I took tear sheets out of all his Corvette
magazines. His Trans-Ams and Camaros and ‘Cudas. I arranged
them in clusters with my work and his work. Those were the
pictures that my brother and I had decorated our rec room
with. And my brother had a lot of parties down there and I
always imagined that there were these guys dancing around
and there were these pictures, and so I wanted to recreate
that. And I put in a really thin cheap green carpet and I
had a ’70s record player with wooden speakers and all
the music that my brother listened to from thirteen to nineteen.
So it went from Black Sabbath to Ice-T and Ice Cube. It was
all this boy kind of music: Kansas and the Police, “Roxanne.”
It was really an eclectic selection of music.
I was really satisfied with that show. Not that I wanted
to make an installation,
but I wanted to make a context
in which I felt the guys belonged in. They weren’t
simply butterflies pinned to the wall in this pristine space.
They had company—they had their cars, they had their
tunes. And then at the opening people were drinking beer,
so I just left the beer bottles out. It was very much like
what it would be if you had your wrestling meet and then
you went to a party at someone’s house that night.
That’s what I wanted it to be like: the party I never
got to go to and the party I always want to go to now.
