Book of the Week: Selected by Blake Andrews

Friday Night in the Coliseum. By Geoff Winningham.

Friday Night in the Coliseum
Photographs by Geoff Winningham

Dancer Press, 2020. 180 pp., black-and-white illustrations, 11x8¾".

“The ancient sport of wrestling has a history as old as recorded time.” So begins the introduction to Geoff Winningham’s recently republished Friday Night In The Coliseum. Fortunately for Winningham, his chosen profession can serve as a kind of time machine. Photography offers a window into ancient doings, and Winningham’s wrestling photographs, which had the currency of contemporary journalism when originally published in 1971, are now almost a half-century old. The coliseum where he photographed was demolished in 1998, many of its wrestlers have since passed away, and the sport itself has plasticized into a TV-friendly multimillion-dollar industry, with chiseled physiques, costumes, and storylines unimaginable in the early 70s.

Friday Night in the Coliseum. By Geoff Winningham.

Yes, time marches on. Things change. Unfortunately, history’s relentless drumbeat threatened to suck Winningham’s book into the past. The first edition sold out within its first year of existence. Some of its photos have circulated in the public consciousness since then, but, until now, the physical book was a rare artifact. With this recently expanded edition from Dancer Press, Friday Night In The Coliseum becomes once again accessible.

The title is a precise summary of what’s inside. For 8 months in 1971, Winningham spent most Friday nights at the Sam Houston Coliseum, located in downtown Houston, witnessing the weekly matches of the regional wrestling circuit. He photographed wrestlers, fans, buskers, promotional blitzes, and other bits of the circus-like culture that surrounded the scene. Up to 9,000 fans would show up each week, enough of a gathering to generate some buzz, but rather paltry in comparison to the crowds of contemporary professional wrestling. Packed inside the old coliseum, they lent the atmosphere a homegrown intimacy. Spectators pulled folding chairs ringside, where they took snapshots and extended memorabilia to be signed by the performers.

Winningham was right on top of the action. His photographs display a proximity and immediacy that would be difficult to achieve today. The majority of the photographs are shot from just a few feet away, and several are from inside the ring itself. At such a close range, the stage lighting provided enough illumination for his purposes. Using fast film and available light (with occasional flash), he created a black and white world which formed its own insular reality. Wrestlers did their part, adopting stage names like Thunderbolt Patterson, Johnny Valentine, Wahoo McDaniel, The Spoiler, and Jose Lothario to enforce the fantasy. This subculture was always an alt-universe, and time’s passage has only enhanced the feeling. Browsing the book’s pages is like landing on another planet.

Friday Night in the Coliseum. By Geoff Winningham.

Like any wrestling promoter worth his salt, Winningham leads with his best foot. The cover shot is a classic. It’s a picture of two wrestlers locked in a hold on the mat. Winningham’s lens has frozen them together like models in a renaissance painting. Ignoring the photographer, they stare into space, each lost in his own thoughts. Perhaps they are plotting the next dynamic move? Or seizing a meditative lull in action? Wrestling may not be commonly considered a thinking person’s sport. Technically it may not be a sport at all. But hidden in the frantic action are small private moments of reverie. The entire enterprise poses philosophical conundrums concerning stagecraft, gamesmanship, and “a spectacle of excess,” as described by Roland Barthes on the jacket flap.

Winningham’s photographs are supported by numerous excerpts from his contemporaneous interviews. These are laid out as text blocks in the margins and serve as color commentary. Some correspond with photos of specific wrestlers and can be read as character studies. Other anecdotes are told by fans. An informative multipage interview with promoter Paul Boesch — the local TV host for Houston’s circuit — serves as the book’s centerpiece, delving into the history of Houston wrestling. Transcribed from audio recordings, these texts have a chatty narrative quality that is easily digested. When taken as a whole, they convey some of the scene’s context, but their presence is subtle. They remain the undercard to Winningham’s photographs, which are the book’s headliner.

Friday Night in the Coliseum. By Geoff Winningham.

“We nourish our faith in myth by an observation of ritual,” Robert Adams once wrote about Winningham, foreshadowing his future endeavors. Wrestling would turn out to be the first in a series of 1970s Winningham projects involving Texas rituals. He would go on to shoot parties, festivals, demo derbies, and parades, and his projects on livestock shows and high school football eventually made it into book form. The crowds and participants offered rich possibilities for photography. Beyond that, these events exemplified community rites that have faded in power since the 1970s. The modern world, with its global 24/7 media saturation, has converted wrestling into celebrity filler, while whatever is left of local ritual has been recently beaten down by coronavirus. With the new edition of Friday Night In The Coliseum, we can relive that era, if even just a moment.

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