Luke Smalley: Exercise at Home

Idiosyncratic looks at the stereotype of the red-blooded American manIn his second photobook, American photographer Luke Smalley revisits the themes from his 2002 monograph Gymnasium. After receiving a degree in sports medicine from Pepperdine University and then working as both a model and personal trainer, Smalley became fascinated with the archetype of the athletic American male, and sought to explore its more playful side. His compositions were inspired by early 20th-century fitness manuals and high school yearbooks.In Exercise at Home, now reissued after being out of print since 2007, Smalley returns to his native Pennsylvania to consider the small-town interiors and landscapes that are the settings for his portraits of young athletes. Color photographs, inspired by a more innocent era, combine whimsy with the inexplicable. Smalley hires a local seamstress to construct a colossal medicine ball; he binds two boys together with a "harness" and leaves them in an empty room for a psychological game of tug-of-war, while somewhere nearby two others lead donkeys around the floor of a basketball court in a high school gym. Scale, time and content are altered to create the world Smalley inhabits. The lush colors of this new vision belie the viewer's sense of dislocation.Luke Smalley (1955-2009) had his first photobook discovered in a hotel lobby by Dior Men's fashion designer and artistic director Kim Jones. Smalley shot Jones' first fashion line and went on to have a storied career in fashion photography. His images have appeared in the New York Times style section, Dazed and V, among others.