Little Fighters

• Photographer
  Jens Juul
• Agency / Studio
  Jens Juul

The atmosphere is good and there is loud music playing in the gym in Copenhagen where the elite girls train gymnastics 20 hours a week. You have to if you want to participate at the elite level. And they do. As a rule of thumb you have to put in at least 10.000 hours of training to compete internationally. Doing gymnastics you primarily fight yourself. Your fears, doubts and pain. But the youngsters help and encourage each other. So it might be a lone battle. But they fight it side by side.

In place of the traditional word ‘portrait’ to describe his black & white photographs of anonymous strangers, Jens Juul prefers to attach the word “portrayal.” From a semantics perspective it may seem a subtle nuance, but in truth, Juul’s photography is a collective visual statement ‘portraying’ the human condition intertwined at its most vulnerable points of truth. Blunt, almost savage, in their revelations and vulnerability, Juul’s images blur the lines between documentary, environmental portraiture, and fine art references.