James Cannon on mental health in sport
April 12th, 2018 – James Cannon - sport & lifestyle



James Cannon shot this series of photos of Clarke Carlisle as part of a personal project looking at mental health in sport.
James writes....
For 4 years I’ve been trying to get a project together on a subject that I feel hasn’t been explored well in the mainstream media. After reading countless articles of high profile sportsmen and women who have suffered from a mental illness combined with my love of sport and the values it encompasses, I wanted to delve deeper making this new body of work.
Clarke Carlisle kindly agreed to join me in the studio to collaborate in making a series of portraits to visually represent how it might look / feel to have a mental health illness. A way for him to tell his story visually, as simply as possible in a hope for us to engage and reach out to others.
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On a technical level the movements within the portrait were photographed as one frame in camera. It was important for me to capture real movements and a feeling in camera that could otherwise have easily have been created in post production. Keeping it pure and simple, I wanted the use of colour to set the tone.
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Clarke is the start of a long list of current and ex professional sportsmen and women who suffer, a lot of the time in silence, with a mental health illness. I’ve had word that Marcus Trescothick and other current professional male and female athletes would like to be part of the project. There’s the support of a mental health charity, picture editors, art directors, art buyers and sports brands and I’ve worked tirelessly to find a way to get this project off the ground working with a fantastic journalist.
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Unfortunately though, 4 Arts Council applications were declined with the feedback that there wasn’t “enough evidence of demand for the project”, which is difficult to obtain when the series of 8 portraits needs their support to get completed.
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For now, these three portraits will stay on the website in the hope I can finish telling Clarke’s and a host of other athletes’ stories at another time.
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