The Suspension of Physics Necessary for All Athletic Endeavors by Colin Blakely

Hello, collectors! On the heels of yesterday's Hey, Hot Shot! panel review, we present a new edition from Colin Blakely, who was a Winter 2007 Hot Shot. Since then, he's been an Aperture Portfolio Prize Runner-Up, and he has shown his work at Jen Bekman Gallery, Fotofest Houston, the Society for Contemporary Photography, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, the Griffin Museum of Photography and, earlier this year, at the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography.

A short distance west of the center of Detroit, Colin's been photographing the mostly minor day-to-day events of the 400 and 500 blocks of Keech Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan, in his series Somewhere in Middle America. Today's new print, The Suspension of Physics Necessary for All Athletic Endeavors, is the fall to the early and late winter, the spring and summer, of Colin's previous editions.

The sum of the seasons is evidence of Colin's enduring devotion to the town, not unlike fellow 20x200 artist Paul Octavious' documentations of a snow-covered and kite-scattered hill-top park in Chicago. In both series, the horizons settle each image and quietly contain their inhabitants, at least temporarily. While walking through the park that he so often photographs, Paul stumbled upon the Ghana World Cup team practicing in his hometown; in The Suspension of Physics..., I think Colin's come across a game of flag football.

Football brings me a little farther south, to the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, home of the dearly-beloved-by-many-but-recently-ceased television show Friday Night Lights. Granted, there's probably not a photographer like Colin or Paul in this fantasy heartland, but there's some semblance in the show and these photos. Sarah Blackwood summed it up so well* in her farewell to FNL over on The Awl, that I'll leave you with her words on what it's all about:

... [it's] about how silly, even tragic it is to be "about" something... how time moves so strangely, how we go from late nights drinking beer and messing around in a deserted field with our friends, our problems seemingly so huge, to late nights drinking wine with a partner, the very hair on our heads weary, our problems seemingly so huge. The thing that the show did so beautifully was refuse to belittle any of these micro-times that we all pass through during a life lived.

*Well said, yes, but this comes with a disclaimer that doubles for me, too, as wrapped up as I tend to get: "I've covered Friday Night Lights for Television Without Pity for the entirety of its run, so you'll forgive me for being slightly overwrought when I reflect on how this show has ushered me from the extended adolescence of my late twenties to this moment right now..."

— Sara