Big Dream by Tim Bowditch

“There is an out-of-time strangeness. But then maybe all photographs have that quality. Time removed from itself. The men in the pictures emanate this quality too; they are in-between one moment and another. They are frozen by the camera, caught considering their position; never to move on. The concrete is almost shining in the sun, gleaming with promise. The air is clear and feels clean. The men in the images are frozen in hope. They’ve worked out the odds, put in the time. There is no reason that today shouldn’t be their lucky day.”

“In Big Dream I studied the men who gamble on Keirin track cycle racing in Japan. Although gambling is generally banned in Japan, bicycle racing is one of four public sports that people can bet on legally. The public sports in Japan are state run with the government taking a cut of the money made from bets placed on the races.”

“On entering the velodromes in Japan I was immediately struck by the emptiness of the vast concrete environments. The spaces can clearly hold a lot of people, but there just aren’t that many people in there. The few people that were outside of the busier indoor payment areas were in solitude. Although I was the only non-Japanese person there I went completely unnoticed. I had carte blanche to move around these individuals and was allowed to study them as intently as they studied the rider’s form.”

“These men were alone, or in groups, but still alone. Facing away from each other — or, not so much away from each other as just facing different ways. Absorbed in their reading: numbers and words that are helping them make sense of what is happening in the surrounding environment. The men have adapted to these clinical environments sometimes eschewing the designated seating areas to sit, stand or squat in pools of sunlight, under staircases or in any solitary space they can find focus.”

“The architects did not intend any of these places to be peopled as such. The indoor ticket counters and the stands, these were designed to function for the placing of bets and watching of sport but the non places, the transitionary places of the stairwells and walkways these are the areas that have been adopted by the gambler as a place to camouflage and to disappear from distraction.”

Thanks for reading this interview with London-based photographer Tim Bowditch.

To see more of Tim’s work visit his Instagram or Website.

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Originally published on Art Narratives