“It is going to be shaky, it is going to be raw, but it’s going to be truth. And from the truth shall emerge the eternal beauty of snowboarding.” — Jérôme Tanon
As producers, we always want to show our best work, our “sickest” work, our work that creates an emotional response from the viewer. We want to inspire. But in that process, the candid moments that fill 95% of our days on snow and on the road are never seen. The down time, the partying, the laughs, and pain. Jérôme Tanon is a French photographer who took it upon himself to document these moments. For three years, he fixed a cheap Sony Handycam on top of his film SLR camera to capture the “filler” between the actual shots.
What emerged is one of the most honest looks at snowboarding in years.
With essentially no budget, The Eternal Beauty of Snowboarding shines light on the daily cliché’s that we fail to notice in the moment, and with that comes the realization that snowboarders practice a hilarious, blissfully innocent lifestyle. Pros travel the world to build the same jumps in different places, spending months and thousands of dollars to record four-second clips that are compiled in a four-minute video part, and risk life and limb while doing so.
An outsider would look at this perspective and think it’s insane. And they’re pretty much right. It is insane. That’s the appeal. These memories and experiences show the allure of snowboarding, and while the reality may be crude at best, Jérôme’s images show the incredible beauty of a lifestyle that few can truly understand.
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