N OUR STRUGGLE TO BE THE BEST AT SOMETHING, THERE'S A FAR WORSE FATE THAN FINISHING LAST
Sandy Nicholson’s photos aren’t about losing.
It’s worse than that.
His subjects are the runner-ups; losers that came tantalizingly close to victory.
They’re people trying to be the best at something but weren’t.
It’s a face we don’t often see in a media landscape obsessed with winners. Here the all-too-familiar, fist pumping, visage of glory is absent, replaced by expressions conveying something more conflicted and full of contradictory emotions.
His subjects aren’t elite competitors either. They’re ordinary people participating in local contests—a regional spelling bee, a custom car event, a scrabble tournament. The photos take us to events that happen all around us but that we rarely get invited into; where a regular person—a tax inspector or retired housewife—gets a chance at a second, more glamorous identity, as a ballroom dancer or rock star.
