#114: ‘Boxing Athenas’ by N’Krumah Lawson Daku

‘Boxing Athenas’ is a photographic essay by artist N’Krumah Lawson Daku.

This project began in 2010 as a way of documenting female boxers at Parisian club Boxing Beats Aubervilliers. As with many documentations of women’s boxing of this era, the project takes the feel of capturing something ‘underground’. Whilst only fifteen years old, the project predates the introduction of boxing at the Olympics by two years, and as such began at a time where women were still struggling to find gyms welcoming them to train – never mind being allowed to compete regularly without stigma.

This sense of the underground, or subversive, is reflected in the (albeit beautiful) dark and atmospheric lighting, interspersed with contrastingly overly-lit portraits – themselves perhaps anticipating the eventual acceptance of women’s participation in the sport.

I found this book by chance, on a recent trip, in the reduced-to-clear section in the Center for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. I’d given up a little while ago on stumbling across ‘decent’ boxing books, but this find has gone a long way to restoring my faith in the hunt.