Luke Smalley: Exercise at Home

Idiosyncratic looks at the stereotype of the red-blooded American man

In his second photobook, American photographer Luke Smalley revisits the themes from his 2002 monograph Gymnasium. After receiving a degree in sports medicine from Pepperdine University and then working as both a model and personal trainer, Smalley became fascinated with the archetype of the athletic American male, and sought to explore its more playful side. His compositions were inspired by early 20th-century fitness manuals and high school yearbooks.
In Exercise at Home, now reissued after being out of print since 2007, Smalley returns to his native Pennsylvania to consider the small-town interiors and landscapes that are the settings for his portraits of young athletes. Color photographs, inspired by a more innocent era, combine whimsy with the inexplicable. Smalley hires a local seamstress to construct a colossal medicine ball; he binds two boys together with a "harness" and leaves them in an empty room for a psychological game of tug-of-war, while somewhere nearby two others lead donkeys around the floor of a basketball court in a high school gym. Scale, time and content are altered to create the world Smalley inhabits. The lush colors of this new vision belie the viewer's sense of dislocation.
Luke Smalley (1955-2009) had his first photobook discovered in a hotel lobby by Dior Men's fashion designer and artistic director Kim Jones. Smalley shot Jones' first fashion line and went on to have a storied career in fashion photography. His images have appeared in the New York Times style section, Dazed and V, among others.