Flaming Energy Ball
July 5 – 28, 2013
I’ve never really cared much for professional sports.
But about three years ago, my kids got into basketball and I began paying attention, specifically to the Portland Trail Blazers, our local professional basketball team. Soon enough, up against the enthusiasm of the crowd and a learned admiration for the game, my cynicism withered, my heart grew larger, and I found that basketball made my life better. I’ve become a true fan. It’s inside me now.
Since that time, my kids and I have watched the Blazers make it to the NBA playoffs each and every season only to get beaten in the first round. Each year it’s knocked me into a surprising yet truly profound malaise. “Flaming Energy Ball” Can perhaps best be thought of as a self-indulgent therapeutic exercise to dig myself out of this hole each spring. Inspired by and co-authored with my son Sam, whose enthusiasm for the game never wavers, I found a different way to watch the remainder of each season, taking pause during the time-outs and half-time shows to search for consolation in the healing properties of light and the power to stop time… photography as an athletic achievement of sorts.
As of this writing, it’s too early in the season to say, but it seems likely that Flaming Energy Ball will continue to be a work-in-progress for some time. Go Blazers!
Shawn Records considers his approach to photography akin to a child picking a stick up off the ground. We all know it’s a stick. But we can see the flute, the sword, or the magic wand as well.
For the past two decades, Records has mostly been in or around Portland, Oregon, teaching, or doing, photography; with occasional breaks to take a little lie-down, watch news bloopers with his kids, or walk the dog (a few different dogs now). His work’s been exhibited, collected, and published in a variety of places, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Format Festival, Blue Sky Gallery, and the Portland Art Museum, among others. A 2021 Washington Post review of his book Hero, described his work as “seemingly banal” yet “little jewels of daily observation.” That’s the sweet spot he’s going for. He’s pretty happy with that.