Bruce Silverglade © by Liliana Ranalletta

The historic location of the Gleason’s Gym (website) in New York was at 77 Front Street, where the pictures were taken, now is located at 130 Water Street in Brooklyn, both right under the Manhattan Bridge.

Here photographs.

Enter In this gym, where they trained among the greatest boxers in history, means first of all penetrate the dense atmosphere of a place where the passion, strength, determination, courage and hard work, become scenery polychrome and varied.

Here the sport is itself a metaphor for life and where the past with its legends and its history flows naturally almost seamlessly in everyday simplicity and genuine of a present real and concrete.

Photographs yellowed by time alternate with worn out tools, trophies, mirrors, benches, and bags that are mixed in a tangle of neon and technical equipment, including ropes and cabinets partially covered with rust; posters and playbills of memorable matches, newspaper articles and portraits of icons of the past and new glories of this line between the walls that almost lose weight and texture, dematerializing the “continuum” of an atmosphere permeated with legend and myth, but also sweat, concentration and passion.

This atmosphere is the heart of my narrative and emotional reportage: a living material and button, soaked with the acrid smell of fatigue, full of eyes looking far as suspended in the concentration of effort.

Sudden silences broken only by the crash of a tool or punches against a bumper.

Atmosphere that is all in the “genius loci” of a scenario that is first of all “existential scenario”, theater of the highest values of sports and life in general.

All this has been possible for the welcome and availability of Bruce that allowed the Gleason’s Gym became my home.

Thanks by Liliana.