ATRIUM Exhibition Engine
The Coach...
A coach is much more than the person standing beside the competition area. A coach is a teacher, a mentor, a strategist, and sometimes the person who sees an athlete’s potential long before the athlete can see it themselves. COACH is a documentary photography series dedicated to the people behind competitive Taekwondo — the coaches who remain beside their athletes before a fight, during its most intense moments, and after the result is known. The photographs were taken at international Taekwondo competitions. They show coaches from different countries in moments that spectators rarely notice: concentration before a match, tactical instructions, tension, encouragement, disappointment, victory, and the quiet moments after the competition is over. Many of these coaches have dedicated decades of their lives to Taekwondo. Their athletes have competed at national and international level, including European and World Championships. But medals and titles are only the visible part of their work. Behind every athlete entering the competition area are years of training, repetition, discipline, mistakes, conversations, victories and defeats. The coach remains part of this journey long before the first fight begins and long after the competition ends. For the author, this subject is also personal. Having practiced Taekwondo for more than three decades as both an athlete and a coach, he photographs this world not as an outside observer, but from within it. And so the camera turns away from the centre of the competition. Not toward the kick. Not toward the medal. But toward the person who remains just outside the frame of victory. The coach.
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