Issue 022
February 2007
No Holds Barred Photography
It's not easy to be unimposing when you stand well over six feet tall, and even less easy to remain as unnoticed as possible, even though he often has to place himself directly in your field of vision, yet that’s exactly what MMA photographer Kjetil Kausland manages to do, and though you may not recognise his name, his work will be more than familiar to you.
Kjetil has been responsible for producing some of the most dynamic and dramatic images to grace the pages of Fighters Only. A master photographer and long-time enthusiast of the sport, he has documented every Cage Rage event since 2004, and we have been lucky enough to publish his images as part of our reports.
His reputation is growing outside of the MMA world though, as he has recently held his first solo exhibition in his native Norway. In the contemporary arts world, he presents work that is equally horrifying and fascinating to gentile art critics and pampered gallery patrons, made the more powerful by MMA’s illegal status in Norway.
A technician par-excellence, he is no average sports photographer. Whereas most shutterbugs are content to photograph by numbers, in effect playing a point and shoot game and relying on luck, Kausland marks himself out as a singular talent. Able to document an evening’s action like no other, he doesn’t just provide stirring images of blistering action – he also takes pictures of moments that may pass you or me by.
A fighter takes a deep breath to focus himself seconds before the opening bell of his contest. Another, bloodied and with an expression that speaks more of emotional pain than physical, is offered a comforting hand by the very man who had beaten him senseless moments before.
Locked in an embrace, two fighters seem to communicate on a level no observer could understand, frozen in time midway through a particularly brutal encounter.
These are the images Kausland presents – striking, distinctive, powerful and bold. Some are abstract, some are clear, but all are impressive. What is possibly the most intriguing aspect of his work is that it is intimate yet detached, subtly balanced somewhere between the role of voyeur and participant.
What he has managed to do as an artist is something few others could hope to achieve. Though involved with the sport for some years now, as an avid fan and recreational practitioner as well as part-time journalist, he has stepped back and applied his talent as if every event he attends is his first. To do so is nigh on impossible for a lesser artist, as the sport and culture of MMA has a way of drawing you in, making it difficult to become detached and look at it with fresh eyes.
His exhibition No Holds Barred was funded by the Arts Council Norway and ran for almost a month in his hometown of Bergen. 2007 will see him join an exhibition in Philadelphia in the USA as part of a showcase of contemporary Norwegian artists. Though this will cause him to miss his first Cage Rage in over two years, he has already made plans to continue his work shooting stunning images across Europe.
For information on upcoming exhibitions or to purchase prints, Kjetil can be contacted via email at [email protected]
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