Tim Barber’s Burning Bridges
“I wanted to create classic and timeless images that communicated the essence of what it means to run in a city environment, that uncompromising beauty that defines New York City,” explained fast-emerging New York photographer,...
Barber captured a day in the life of the ‘NYC BridgeRunners’, all clad in Nike Sportswear’s Fall/Holiday 2010 collection. “The inspiration behind Nike Sportswear’s most recent collection was Athletics West, a 1970’s era rebel Nike running club that represented daring individuals who transformed the sport of running,” said Barber. “The NYC Bridge Runners are a like-minded group of runners, and were a perfect fit to represent this collection.” Consisting of a diverse group of young creatives, the NYC BridgeRunners come together twice a week to run the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges. Barber documented these bridge runs as a foil for Nike’s latest wares, the result of which are authentic, documentary-style images that allow an insight into the lives of contemporary urban athletes. “I decided to shoot it all black and white to accentuate that gritty energy of the streets of New York,” says Barber, “I was shooting real runners in their natural environments so I wanted the images to reflect and translate that realness.”
—Indigo Clarke
