#rowing team

"Well it's about time!"

Winning is a team effort and the team are about to be properly rewarded for their efforts.

The boys had to hold off the week before the competition and so were ready for some much needed relief, starting with the team caption and then the members in order of seniority.

Photography by Geoffrey Biddle, Harvard, 1969-70

When I was choosing the rowing photos for this website, I also came across pictures from the following year, of students getting ready for the Hasty Pudding Club Review, an annual drag theatrical that has been going on since 1844. Another friend was in that show, and again I got permission to photograph.

Isabelle Fuhrman as Alex Dall in "The Novice"(2021)

dir.Lauren Hadaway

Alex, a college freshman, joins her university's rowing team and undertakes an obsessive physical and psychological journey to make it to the top varsity boat. No matter the cost. Intent on outperforming her teammates, Alex pushes herself to her limits-and beyond, alienating everyone around her in the name of success.

Me when practice started during covid: omg, we get to row in SINGLES?! This is gonna be so much fun! I’m so exited!

“An influencer is an individual who has the power to affect purchas(ing) decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, position.”  (The Influencer Marketing Club).  No matter their probable lack of world perspective not requiring much background in history, literature, social science, the maths, bio-science, geo-science and the rest, the influencer’s value is measured by his or her power over the purchaser of goods.

Good bone structure, smooth skin, the monotonous, never fully completed toothy smile is what the “influencer” requires in the late consumer age.  Olivia “Jade” Giannulli whose parents bribed her into The University of Southern California through the fraility of a few USC authority figures has millions of followers and subscribers on Instagram which does not teach much literature, history, math, or science but on which she may hawk to her few million minions her own “branded makeup palette” connected with Sephora.   

“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend,” Giannulli said in August. “But I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying … I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.” -- Giannulli

For such benighted figures one remains hopeful for a gentle passage into some structured form of learning, something beyond selling makeup, something offering just a bit of perspective concerning the world she is “influencing.”  Better for her, better for the world “out there.”