About Spaces...
About Spaces...
Christian Lombardi
Photographer
Bolivia
All pictures copyrighted ZUMA Press (Keystone Pictures USA)
Spotlights On:
MMA / BW Versions
2022... Mixed Martial Arts
MMA 'Mixed Martial Arts' training at the Academia Alianza Bolivia, in La Paz.
Practitioners there train boxing, kick boxing, Muay Thai, Judo, Jiujitsu, wrestling and grappling in a multidisciplinary group, MMA.
¨The origin of current mixed martial arts dates back to the ancient Olympic Games, where previously the system used was pankration, one of the oldest forms of combat and with few rules in 708 BC.
The desire to continue with professional wrestling weakened after the first world war, to later resurface in two main systems, which would be real competition and professional wrestling (which began to give more importance to choreography and show ).
Mixed Martial Arts emerged from various competitions held in Europe, Japan and the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.
The idea of mixed martial arts is often confused as a vale tudo championship that comes from Brazil, as well as some combat sports such as full contact or kickboxing.
All sports that require contact are usually linked together, although each discipline has different tactics and rules, it has created the current generic image of the techniques used in mixed martial arts championships.
Mixed martial arts became popular worldwide thanks to the first UFC tournaments where fighters faced each other without weight or time limits. The first three UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) were won by Royce Gracie in the mid-nineties.¨(source https://artesmarcialesner.wordpress.com/historia-del-mma)
In Bolivia, Alianza Bolivia was created in 2007 after promoting Vale Todo since the 1990s. Today it is the main MMA academy in the country.
Fatal accidents, child labor, devastated environment: in the Porco mine, operated by Glencore in the Bolivian highlands, cooperatives extract zinc, lead and silver in inhumane conditions. The multinational looks away but buys a large part of these minerals.
A story of organized irresponsibility that shows the importance of accepting the initiative for responsible multinationals.
2021... Kick Boxing
Amateur inter-club Kick Boxing championship in La Paz, Bolivia.
Kick boxing is part of MMA. by Mixed Martial Arts Practitioners who want to progress further go through tournaments in the various disciplines separately. Thus, they pursue and find over time their strengths and weaknesses, their style, their limits, what they must overcome. In Bolivia, Mixed Martial Arts are still wrapped in a cloak of prejudices and stereotypes often very far from reality. However, each practitioner finds there a motive usually far from those given to him. At the end, they all know what makes a good "dojo", once the entrance door is passed, they can leave the entire universe and its problems outside, forget everything...
When they get in the ring, or enter the so-called "cage", the "amateurs", in these fights that do not propose fame or money, end up facing their reflection and someone else "of the family". For three rounds of three minutes, if they do not go through the KO, they will feel more alive than ever .The practiced hundreds of times is erased from the mind, adrenaline tries to compensate for cardio quickly in free fall, the bell of the end of the round is lost in the very distant future, blows come and go... and even if the public can hardly see it, they are already in another universe, connecting with another type of spirit, and they had the guts to go to fight...
2020...COVID-19
Plasticized souls and liquified brains
2019...Coup d'État...or not...
During the end of October and the all month of November, the polarized country, divided
between Evo Morales supporters and the rest of the population, with opposition supporters
heading the movement, get to the streets. Then, it gets as a strange movie: everybody against everybody. Police go to mutiny and finally, the Army calm down everything to ensure a transition government while Morales flies away from the country.
Welcome to Saltydise...
Some stairs made of salt blocks, in the middle of nowhere and leading nowhere ... everyone poses for the photo. Then, they get down to make room for the next group. With cities like Tokyo, counting as 6,224.66 people living per square kilometer, Japanese tourists who come to see the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia have something to feel off the planet with. Luxury hotels, specially cared food, once facing the indiscernible horizon, they are left in zero gravity.
Then, your guide will bring you back to earth to entertain yourself to take photos in forced perspective, this strange local fashion phenomenon, a tourist "must see" and "must done".
Broken promises
Archives/ samples:
Disabled Protesters
Called now "Dark Times" /1997-2001: Embedded during
four years with Bolivian Jungle Narcotic Special Forces
Being integrated into the troops, embedded, is a very recent form of recovery by war correspondents.
It can go back to 499-449 BC, during the wars between Greece and Persia, with Herodotus, historian present on "the ground", becoming one of the fathers of journalism, and in this case journalism in conflict situations armed.
In the 21st century, in 2003, 775 reporters and photographers were brought in by the US Army as integrants, during the invasion of Iraq...and so on...
About Oblivion
May 2016 - La Paz, Bolivia - From oblivion to ashes: Forgotten dead bodies reduction in La Paz cementery
The Origins
2004-2005 When Cholitas Wrestling just emerges in Bolivia: Firstly invented to help old classical wrestling shows, with no money, no press, no strangers. Cholitas wrestling begins his ascension with some two or three women putting everything in the spectacles, for their little public, mostly low class people and their childrens...Then, everything changed...get lost...
Bolivian Gas rush
Woden Pirate Leg
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