Drawn to Water
January 16 – February 11, 1987
In 1984, while leafing through a local newspaper, I saw a picture of six legs jutting out of water at odd angles, along with the announcement of a performance by the Synchrolites of Staten Island. Not being a swimmer myself, I was nonetheless intrigued enough to attend their performance and so began my long fascination with the Synchrolites. These swimmers operated outside of society’s prescription for female perfection. In our culture, young women are rarely pictured in bathing suits on their own terms. Aging women are largely unseen. Sometimes I think that we should take another look.
When I first began this project, I may have been as equally interested in the quirky, cultural aspects of synchronized swimming, as in each swimmer’s physical form; all types of female bodies in bathing suits trying to swim harmoniously. In their grace and their beauty, they were like dancers, yet at the same time, some of their unsuccessful attempts to swim in unison were like a humorous attempt at an Esther Williams extravaganza.
During this time “diving in” and being “in deep water” became appropriate metaphors in getting the work done. There were many times when I found myself “in over my head” in both my work and my life. By 1990, because of family life and a full-time job, I took a leave of absence from photographing the Synchrolites for almost five years. But when I did return, I felt as though I was reclaiming a familiar landscape that few people noticed. Photographing these swimmers permitted me to be in a close environment, a relaxed setting in which female bodies moved in and out of water, each carrying her own lightness or weight of years. The water itself became a subject as the girls and women moved from solid to liquid states. This was a society of girls and women who created a gliding, floating world for themselves.
As the swimmers aged, so did I. As time passed, things changed. Because of the success of Title IX providing more athletic opportunities for females, fewer young girls maintained an interest in synchronized swimming. At some point, the Synchrolites stopped giving public performances and dropped their name. However, for a long time they did continue to swim together every Wednesday night. Towards the end of my time with the group, I began to take direct portraits of individual women. Although I never mastered the art of swimming, I am deeply grateful to these young and aging women who showed me the importance of being drawn to water.
Christine Osinski received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Yale University, and is currently Professor in the School of Art at The Cooper Union, New York. Osinski’s work has been reviewed and published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Art New England, The Village Voice, and DoubleTake, among many others. Photographs by Osinksi were presented by Blue Sky in 1987 and 1996, and have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Alice Austen House Museum, the Dallas Women’s Museum, the Katonah Museum, the Bronx Council of the Arts, P.S.1, and Light Gallery, as well at international venues in China, Russia, New Zealand, and Europe. In 2005, Osinski became a Guggenheim Fellow, and has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and The Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
