AIRGAP | DREW BROWN

76 pages, 38 plates
9.25 x 12.5 in.
ISBN 978-1-942953-35-7

Set against the science fiction backdrop of a crowdless and LED-lined arena, Drew Brown's AIRGAP depicts a cold and intimate world of contact sport. On the ice, we follow plastic-clad hockey players as they rotate through shifts of observation, play, and recovery. We see helmets clap together in a scrum against the boards, the exhale of wet air on plexiglass, and a player's face cut by shadow as he enters the penalty box. Outside of the rink, players engineer their bodies to perform and rebuild—one man disappears into a cylinder of cryo-smoke, another strains over a training bike, his breath turned to data by a machine. Experiential and evidentiary, these photographs throw light on glass, sweat, wounds, and ice, equalizing the physical details of the game and its effects on the body. Splicing ice hockey with a hallucinatory space ride, AIRGAP drops the viewer into a realm where humans and technology merge under a grid of electric light.