Q&A
“If people feel that my photographs have
been a showcase for gymnastics at its best,
then that’s honestly all I could ever hope for.”
EILEEN LANGSLEY (GBR)
PRIOR to the 14th annual induction din- ner of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame, each honoree in attendance
sat down with IG Editor Dwight Normile for a
one-on-one interview. (Russia’s Yuri Korolev was
not present due to visa complications.) Those conversations are printed here, beginning with former
FIG photographer (1984-2001) Eileen Langsley
(Great Britian), who received the International
Order of Merit. Interviews with Class of 2010
inductees Cathy Rigby and Henrietta Onodi
are on the following pages.
What was your first experience shooting gymnastics, and what feedback did you get? It was
just shooting my gymnasts and trying to take
coaching pictures,… It was just fortunate that I got
a couple of girls who were in the British squad,
and they had very good technique.… But I didn’t
actually get any feedback on my photography until
I started sending pictures of these girls to the local
newspapers and get some publicity for them. And
just the fact that the papers came back and said,
‘Can you send us some more? She’s going to the
national championships. Can you go and take
some pictures there.’ That was really the first kind
of feedback I got that was sort of positive
response to what I’d been doing.
And what led to your position as official FIG
photographer? I had been submitting pictures to
World Gymnastics magazine, which was coming
out of Hungary, for two or three years, and the
editor of that magazine was quite closely involved
with the FIG and was producing the magazine on
behalf of the FIG. And he received some information from Los Angeles that they could have a photographer in the pool, and he suggested me. So
my first Olympic games, I worked as a pool photographer, which is unheard of, really. And I have
to say [laughs], it did cause a bit of resentment
with some of my colleagues when they walked in
and saw that I was working inside and they were
on the outside.
THOMAS SCHREYER
It was quite an overwhelming experience to
actually go inside, I think, because I’ve got a background of sport. [And] you’ve automatically got a
sympathy for the people who are competing and
for the coaches. And I tried right from the start to
work with them as the No.-1 priority and not to
affect what they were doing at all. And over the
years of working regularly as a pool photographer,
I’ve tried to bring in guidelines for the people who
worked in gymnastics, how to deport yourself,
really, so that you’re not having any impact on
what’s going on. And of course in those days the
cameras were noisy, and I tried not to use motor-drive. I tried to hand wind everything, and just little things like that.
starting out in another one. And it did me a lot of
good personally, actually, to be faced with a whole
lot of new challenges.
What were your favorite events to shoot?
I think I enjoyed Sydney (2000 Olympics) enormously, mostly because I knew from the way I was
beginning to feel, as an older woman, that my
career was slowing down a lot. And I came away
feeling I had shot Sydney well, and that really
pleased me. But of course, by then, camera technology had improved so much. I had just started
using auto-focus, which as your eyes get older is a
tremendous help.
I think really, just looking back, there was
always something that I kept as a memory from
most of the events I
did, or it may be the
memory of a picture I
took that made that
particular event special
for me, or it may just be the
people I knew from working
in that country. I’ve been so
fortunate in so many things, but
[I remember] the people I’ve
met through gymnastics all over
the world, many of whom have become
lifetime friends. Well, as we say in
England, it’s the icing on the cake.
How has digital change the job? I would love
to take some of the modern generation of young
sports photographers back 15-20 years, with no
auto-focus, no auto-exposure, having to understand the lighting and how to deal with it,… But I
think one thing I absolutely love about it is the
immediate feedback that you get … and you can
straightaway adapt the way you’ve been working.
In the old days, I can remember going to St.
Petersburg for a two-week European event and
not actually seeing any film until I got home to
Britain. And that’s quite unnerving to be shooting
day after day thinking, How’s it going to look?
A big advantage was, with Gerry’s help, I
always did my own processing. And of
course, the expense has changed as
well, because you’re not buying
film, you’re not having prints
made, you keep reusing your com-
pact flash cards,… But I have to
say, I don’t get the same sense of
satisfaction with digital that I used
to get with film.
You quit a steady teaching job to
become a full-time photographer.
Was that a hard decision? It was,
because I was head of the department,
and I was earning a good salary, and
Gerry, my husband, had left full-time
employment the year before to go as a freelance translator. So things were quite rocky
financially. And when you work independently, you’ve got nobody picking up your expenses, so just getting to events and covering them
is such a huge expense. And the reality of what
I had done hit me quite hard in financial
terms. But having said that, I mean, it was a
wonderful new lease in life in my thirties to
have left one career behind and to be
Before the Internet made gym-
nastics events accessible, you
used to write competition
reports that complemented
your photos and helped bring
the sport to life. How do you
want to be remembered? That’s
a really nice thing to say. I’ve
always just really wanted my
images to be a real tribute to what I
think is one of the greatest sports.
I’ve taught many sports, I played a lot
of sports, but gymnastics has always
been closest to my heart because I really
believe in the values and the qualities it
develops in children. I love the beauty of
the sport, I love the challenge of photo-
graphing it because it changes.
Gymnastics moves on and progresses,
and I love the challenge in that. If people
feel that my photographs have been a
showcase for gymnastics at its best, then
that’s honestly all I could ever hope for.
