ABOUT

Concept: Portraits of boxer Lisa Moore at Lansbury ABC in Poplar, east London. Lisa won the Haringey Box Cup in 2014, went on to box for Repton in Bethnal Green, and her route into the sport ran from podium dancing in Ibiza to a place on the England squad and then into coaching, which is what she does now. This shoot changed what I photograph. I’d been making lifestyle work that fed a narrow idea of how women are meant to look, and an hour in a boxing gym with someone who had no interest in performing made the alternative obvious.

Execution: We worked in the club’s own gym and ring: hands being wrapped, rope work, pads with her coach, and the painted Lansbury crest filling the wall behind her. I worked with the room rather than against it. The light stays low and directional, exposed for the cream brick, the red bags and the club crest rather than for her face alone, so the gym stays in the picture. The in between frames carry the story: a hand taping, boots just off the floor with the rope blurred underneath, a fighter crouched in her own corner looking at nothing.

Results: A portrait series that set the direction for my sport work: women in sport photographed as athletes, not as a look.