In Flux, I explore the relationship balancing motion and stillness in photography. Honouring the walls of my trampoline gym are the large scale paintings of Phylis Ross, my trampoline coach’s late mother. Capturing movement and grace, I reimagined her work through a modern photographic lens, including a world-recognized olympian.
I recreated the look of her brushstrokes by using light painting and motion blur in the background, treating each photograph as two layers: a blurred backdrop expressing motion and mimicking the brush strokes, and a sharply frozen subject captured with strobe light.
Training as a professional trampolinist for 7 years, specifically at Skyriders Trampoline Place for 3 years under Dave Ross, has certainly influenced my practice. Ross, a former Olympic coach for Team Canada and mentor to athletes like Keren Cockburn, Mathieu Turgeon, Rosannagh MacLennan, and Jason Burnett, to name a few, has been key to bringing this project to life.
Working with athlete Dafne Navarro, an Olympic finalist and two-time world medalist, has become a vital visual instrument in the actualization of this series for me, along with National-level athlete Luisa Braaf, from Team Germany, and Kasha Noga-Bard from Team Canada.
This multicultural series celebrates the mix of past and present representation of competitive trampoline, capturing the sport in a way that honors the original Ross paintings.