Olympics in Paris: behind the scenes of a photo shoot with handball players of the French team

The sound of a bouncing ball, the crunch of sneakers on the ground… Closing your eyes gives you a strange feeling as if you are in the gym. Opening them, you will see a huge colorful fresco “Electricity Fairy”. eliminates any confusion: we are in the Dufy room of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. With the blue jerseys of the French national team on their backs, handball players Grace Zaadi, Pauletta Foppa and Tamara Horacek come to life around Mathieu Forget.

The world champions responded to an invitation from versatile artist and son of former tennis player Guy Forget for a special photo shoot. Dancer, director and levitating photography specialist, Forgetmat has been given carte blanche by Paris museums for his project “Making Sports Fly” ahead of the 2024 Paris Games, where he is inviting high-level athletes to pose with him among works of art.

The goal of the game is to “represent the sport through its movements and then bring dance into it.” “When I meet athletes, I always try to understand the vocabulary of the body in their discipline. I adapt very quickly to their world and then try to bring them into mine a little,” sums up Mathieu Forget. So we had to see him connect pirouettes and cartwheels between three handball players who countered him with feints and half-turns in contact to pass the ball. Everything was filmed by drone and photographed by the artist’s technical team.

“I’m thinking about how to highlight the museum and the athletes”

“It smells like handball,” says Grace Zaadi, a leader at heart who, just like on the field, uses the instructions given between two takes to support her teammates. Who, Mathieu Forget or Le Bleu coach Olivier Krumbholz, is the most difficult to follow? We will keep silent about the players’ reactions; what is said in the museum stays in the museum! But Mathieu Forget knows that athletes may have some minor problems.

“All athletes have incredible control over their bodies, so I always go their way. I will never force them. “I just push them a little so that they experience something new and a little exciting,” admits Mathieu Forget. I’m thinking about how to highlight the museum and the athletes, trying to find something aesthetically pleasing, graphic and hopefully evoking emotion. »

A change of scenery. For a new series of photographs, the entire troupe descends into the Moulin hall. It is to the very colorful “Rhythm No. 1” by Robert Delaunay that Mathieu Forget invites the handball players to “dance very closely.” And so the four main characters touch each other, shoulder to shoulder, then one falls to the ground, the other moves with his hands up. Our tricolors have a bit of a hard time grasping the idea, and inevitably a moment of collision comes… in a fit of laughter.

And now Teddy Reiner?

By filming several new extension jumps, Mathieu Forget wanted to pay homage to the roundness of the painting, which serves as a backdrop to the backflip, each performance of which elicits several cries of fear from the museum staff who came to see the painting. performance .

The general public will be able to see in the Palais Galliera (and, no doubt, soon on the streets of Paris) the result of this photo shoot, as well as photo sessions carried out with fencer Enzo Lefort, swimmer Florent Manadou, judoka Romané Dico, 110m hurdles specialist Sasha Joya and Wheelchair tennis champion Pauline Déroulède.

Mathieu Forget would like to continue his project and finally photograph Teddy Riner. “I would like to. We failed, and it was not by a small margin. I would also like a French football player, Giroud, Mbappe, Griezmann, anyone, a French tennis player…” lists the artist, who also thinks why not, export your idea to the USA and work with American athletes. Because after the contribution to the cultural program of Paris 2024 comes… Los Angeles 2028.