Tennis Courts IV completes the subject of empty, abandoned courts, one after another like a long sequence shot through different seasons and different places.
"In the winter of 1999, I began to take photographs of empty tennis courts – private, public, old, new, abandoned. Over the next twenty-three years, I made thousands of photos of these courts. Tennis Courts IV is the fourth volume dedicated to this series.
The number four is an intrinsic part of the DNA of tennis: It's the maximum number of players in a double's match and the fewest amount of points it takes to win a game. Tennis's four biggest tournaments make up the Grand Slam. But this obsessive series of tennis court photographs was never focused on tennis itself. It was more like a look at the cyclical return of the seasons, images of tennis courts throughout the years, with all their changes, the changes in the landscape, and the way I look at all those changes."
Giasco Bertoli
Giasco Bertoli (born 1965 in Cevio, Switzerland) is a Swiss Italian photographer who lives and works in Paris. He discovers photography at the age of twelve, when he receives his first camera, a Kodak Instamatic Pocket 200. He studied photography at the European Institute of Design in Milan and at the New School in New York. Since the 1990s, his work has focused on sport, cinema, youth, music and landscape. Bertoli is interested in both the dreamlike and ordinary dimensions of everyday life, exploring the landscapes of his native Switzerland, swimming pools, garages and other evidence of habitation and nature. He regularly contributes to various international publications, including the magazine Purple, in which many of his portraits are published.
