Shot Put
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Shot put is not an ancient sport. It seems to have started with soldiers hurling cannonballs in competition, and it became part of the British Amateur Championships in 1866.
Eadweard Muybridge recorded Frank Bird Gummey, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, throwing a 16-pound shot (above) in his 1887 book Animal Locomotion. Nowadays shot put throwers spin around, but this technique was not used until the 1950s.
The standard weight of the shot for men's shot put is 16 pounds, but for women's shot put it's 4 kg (8.8 pounds). I will refrain from commenting on men's versus women's sports.
The photo above shows men throwing shot into the air, said to be from the 1925 German silent film Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (The Way to Strength and Beauty).
Here's the passage from the film. Note, however, that in the film there are six guys, not five, so the photo is not taken directly from the film. Presumably the photo was taken separately while the film was being shot.
The photo has been credited to female photographer Helmy Hurt, but still photography for the film was done by both Helmy Hurt and Gerhard Riebicke, and since Riebicke is known for other photos of naked men throwing shot in the air (see below), I think it's more likely that the photo is by Riebicke, and Hurt took photos of female athletes in the film.
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Here's a 1928 photo of an athlete throwing a shot into the air by German photographer Gerhard Riebicke. Riebicke's photos documented the German Freikörperkultur (FKK) movement, which advocated nudity in the open air as healthful.
And here's a 1930 German photo. This guy looks like he's actually going to throw the shot for distance, not just throwing it up in the air.
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Artists have not neglected shot put throwers. Here's a 1930 bronze sculpture by German sculptor Burkhart Ebe.
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This shot put sculpture by J. Gadenz depicts Otto Woellke, the German shot put gold-medal winner in the 1936 Olympics.
Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had a stadium built in Rome in 1932 called Stadio dei Marmi. The stadium is surrounded by 60 statues of athletes representing different sports. The athletes are mostly naked in the ancient Roman style, since Mussolini, dreaming of ancient Rome, was trying to make Italy great again (does that remind you of a current political slogan?).
The statue above is called Ball Thrower. I don't know whether he's a shot put thrower or throwing some other ball.
The rear of the Ball Thrower statue.
A snapshot of a shot put thrower in the 1960s.
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Paintings of shot put throwers are rare. This 1950 painting by Kostas Iliadis is called Young Shot Put.
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This 1999 painting by Georgy Gurianov is called Thrower.
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We end with Shot Put by contemporary Irish sculptor Michael Keane.
7 comments:
Came across this bit of information when researching Ewoud Broeksma (d. 2019), a photographer from the Netherlands who photographed current-day athletes in sets of photos called "Doubles." The first photo shows the athlete clothed, the second the same athlete fully nude. Here's a brief description:
"Photographer Ewoud Broeksma, like Eadweard Muybridge, has devoted much of his career to examining athletes, recording them, and celebrating the poetry of an athlete in motion."
Could Unashamed Male devote some space to Broeksma? Followers of this site might find it interesting.
Very nice post.
@Anon - Good idea. I have a number of Broeksma's photos, and he would make a good subject for my series on Photographers.
By marriages, Frank Bird Gummey's wife is my 6th cousin, twice removed. But, she's also my 8th cousin, twice removed, by blood.
He was a real shotputter! From his University of Pennsylvania biography: "During his first year at University of Pennsylvania, ... (h)e won the 16 pound shot put with a throw of 30 feet 6 inches during the fall sports season."
Links:
https://archives.upenn.edu/exhibits/penn-people/biography/frank-bird-gummey/
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gummey-2
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KH41-YVM
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/214831920
Like Muybridge and his nude university students, here's another contemporary site featuring the nude male form in all its glory, "Bodytorium." The young men are not from UPenn, but that's only a minor detail. Here is the site's mission statement:
Sometimes I hear women say that they “love a man in a suit”. But in my opinion, a man looks terrible and nothing like a man when he is choked up inside shirt and tie. A suit completely masks the best aspects of what makes a man amazing and turns him into a boring, featureless agent of oppression. To me, a man looks the best when he is wearing nothing but his own skin, like an athlete during the early Olympic games. Forget social norms, forget fashion. Forget those feature-eliminating dress pants, forget clothes! Just enjoy a naked man!
Great art
I don't know whether to admire men or statues more!
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