In the two decades since the end of the apartheid, South Africans have held onto hope that housing, jobs, and education will become available to all. Yet, townships often remain places where survival, not quality of life, define daily life.
In this gritty, post-Soviet mining town nestled in the Tian Shan mountains I have found the beauty and warmth of a proud people determined to hold on to their roots and way of life in a place that more often than not feels like the end of the world.
With slow time and the particular rhythms of rural life, I am reminded of my earliest self and the limitlessness of childhood.
The story of amateur boxing is framed in images of bodies, tiredness, contact, desire, damage, relationship, violence, and heart.
Here, where family and religion bind people together, violence and poverty can tear them apart.