Holding Joan

Holding Joan frames women’s wrestling as myth and transformation. Rooted in documentary yet reshaped toward ambiguity, the work reimagines women not as spectators or objects but as agents of strength, grace, and change.

This series began with my son. Watching him wrestle, I was struck by how this ancient sport, one of the oldest forms of human competition carries echoes far beyond the mat. Wrestling has existed for thousands of years, immortalized in Greek friezes, Roman reliefs, and Renaissance sculpture. The entangled bodies, the tension between force and fluidity, spoke to history, mythology, and something deeply personal, what it means to struggle, to support, to resist, and to yield.

From there, my attention turned to female wrestlers, athletes entering a space long reserved for men. Photographed during unscripted matches, the photographs blur the line between representation and abstraction. Collisions and entanglements disorient the viewer, unsettling how we see gender, competition, or even the body itself. Though rooted in documentary, the images are reshaped toward ambiguity, transforming confrontation into something collaborative, intimate, and strange. Wrestling becomes more than sport; it becomes a space of transformation where the body is both site and symbol, vessel and narrative. Historically, women were spectators to physicality. Here, they are the action figures, their bodies shaping outcomes, their choices steering the narrative.

This work emerges at a time when women’s rights are under global threat. Nearly one in two women report experiencing abuse from an intimate partner. One in three have experienced physical violence. These are not abstract statistics; they reflect the entrenched structures that continue to endanger women’s autonomy and safety. Generally, visual culture has portrayed women as victims or objects. Holding Joan resists this narrative. These athletes are not symbols of violence or objects of desire, but embodiments of strength, complexity, and grace.

Femininity is not left behind on the mat. Braids, bows, nail polish, and colorful singlets remain. These athletes do not shed femininity to compete, they expand it. Wrestling becomes a space where femininity and force coexist, where resilience does not erase softness. Holding Joan reimagines the female protagonist as an agent of consequence.

A wrestling “hold” is a technique of control. But to hold can also mean to protect, to remember, to mourn. My images linger in this ambiguity, suspending athletes between intensity and clarity, confrontation and sculpture. As I continue to photograph and video female wrestlers across the country, I am building a living archive of young women in struggle and in strength.