A new Norfolk exhibition captures young British champions at home in their living rooms.
Think about photographing sports professionally, and a certain type of image comes to mind. An athlete in action, typically mid-air, sweat beads and straining muscles frozen in a moment in time. The split-second between drama and failure, evoking all the passion, all the intensity, of the sport in one dramatic image.
But that’s not everything that taking part in a sport entails. It’s not even most of it.
Yes, that dramatic moment might be what you’re working towards. But the “working towards” matters too: it’s where the real battle of a sportsperson actually takes place. And that’s exactly what award-winning artist and documentary photographer Debby Besford‘s decade-long project focuses on instead.
Away from the arena
Now on show in an exhibition in Norfolk titled The Art of Roller Skating, Debby’s images take these girls away from the rink and into the domestic setting. And in doing so, they provide a whole new perspective on these sporting champions.
It’s a subject Debby has intimate knowledge of. Having grown up in Great Yarmouth, as a teenager she trained as an artistic roller skater and travelled all over the country to competitions. Later on, became a national skating judge.
For the past decade, she has been creatively documenting the journeys of young roller skaters based in East Anglia as they train and develop their skills towards British and World Championship level.
In these pictures, the girls don the glittering, sequinned costumes they skate in. But rather than standing at a rink barrier, Debby’s placed them on their parents’ beige carpets, in front of floral wallpaper, next to the TV, or a chest of drawers.
The juxtaposition is instant and arresting. These spectacular costumes, designed to be visible and entrancing from the furthest seat in the arena, look decidedly odd when surrounded by the ordinary clutter of a teenage bedroom. The scene sits awkwardly between school photo and fashion editorial, and it’s exactly this sense of unease that makes these pictures so compelling.
Deep heritage
From 26 September until April, more than 40 of these photographs go on show at Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth, in an exhibition called The Art of Roller Skating. It’s a place with deep skating heritage: Gorleston Rollerdrome, the Winter Gardens, and now the Breydon Arena all feature in the town’s story, which continues today through the Retro Skating Academy.
And yet artistic roller skating has long been undervalued by the culture at large. From figure work to free skating and disco routines, it’s a hugely demanding sport, but lives permanently in ice skating’s shadow.
The exhibition’s other strand, The Jump Series, is pure spectacle that aims to right that balance. These still images and slow-motion videos capture each skater rotating in mid-air, revealing their physical strength, emotion and intense determination in the pursuit of “the perfect jump”.
The show also includes a full archive: posters, programmes, newspaper cuttings and championship sportswear stretching back to the 1960s, tracing the sport’s 1970s and 80s heyday and its particular appeal around Great Yarmouth.
This historical context helps us connect further with Debby’s portraits and make the case that this often-overlooked sporting culture deserves as much attention as the more fashionable ones.
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