Pumping Iron
Kuhusu kitabu pepe hiki
WHO ARE THEY AND WHY DO THEY DO IT? –these men who dedicate themselves to building bodies like Hellenistic statues; who crisscross the world competing for titles as grandiose yet as publicly uncelebrated (Mr. America, Mr. Universe, Mr. Olympia) as their gargantuan physiques; whose daily lives are as rigidly defined and regulated by their obsession to mold the ideal body as any other master athlete's is towards perfecting his craft. Yet, rather than the public acclaim that normally follows an athletic triumph, only their fellow muscle men know who they are and know the price they have paid to win their incredible bodies.
Novelist Charles Gaines and photographer George Butler have spent the last two years trying to capture the essence of this strange, joyful, exotic world: “We have been to quite a few places tracking bodybuilders, seeing contests and putting together the materials here. If we felt at times a little like 19th-century explorers –like Doughty, perhaps, off trekking through Arabia –it was because we found bodybuilding to be as primeval and unmapped as parts of Labrador. Nobody, we discovered, had been back into it to send a report on what it was like. This struck us then as peculiar, and it still does.
Ukadiriaji na maoni
Kuhusu mwandishi
CHARLES GAINES lives in Alabama and Nova Scotia. He is an outdoorsman, a fly fisherman, and a New York Times bestselling author of over twenty fiction and nonfiction books. He is also the co-inventor of paintball.
GEORGE BUTLER was a photographer and filmmaker who lived on a farm in New Hampshire. He was co-editor of The New Soldier, published in 1971, and he created many successful documentary films. He died in 2021.
