Let's Go Buffalo!
Let's Go Buffalo!
ourteen years without a playoff game. Fourteen years of watching other cities celebrate while we rebuilt, retooled, and convinced ourselves next season was the one. On Sunday night, down two goals to Boston with eight minutes left, KeyBank Center didn't go quiet. It got louder. Four straight goals later, the building came apart.
I watched it the same way many people in this city did. With disbelief, and then something that felt a lot like exhaling. This week I've been going back through the archive. Portraits of men who wore the jersey. Men who gave the fans of this city something to hold onto long before Sunday night.
Rob Ray
The Rob Ray portrait came out of a pro bono project with a local agency, connecting Buffalo sports figures to a pitbull rescue. Small budget, small crew, big subject.
Rob Ray spent thirteen seasons in Buffalo. He fought everyone, often, and found so many creative ways to shed his jersey mid-fight that the NHL eventually wrote a rule specifically to stop him. There is one player in the history of this league with a rule bearing his name. That's the man who showed up to my studio.
Brian Gionta
I had about twelve hours notice on this one.
Sports Illustrated called. Team USA was going to announce Brian Gionta as captain of the Olympic hockey team during the World Junior Championships, which that year were being held in Buffalo. Could I photograph him? Tomorrow?
Yes. Obviously yes.
Gionta is from Rochester. He came up watching the same hockey we all watched in Western New York. And here he was, being handed the captaincy for the United States, in our city, during a tournament that had taken over every bar and rink in the region.
Two very different photographs. One black and white, close, no room to hide. The other lit with the cool blue of a man carrying a country into the Olympics. Made years apart, for different clients and different purposes.
Game 2 is tonight. Let's go Buffalo!
