While the Olympic spirit comes to life in the magic of each edition of the Olympic Games, it also lives well beyond the great sporting event, thanks to the work of global organizations supported by the IOC and independent individuals and programs that share a common goal: to create a better world through sport.  

Olympism Made Visible is a long-term international photography project newly initiated by the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage (OFCH) to reveal the Olympic values and their impact when sport is placed at the service of humankind through community-based activities around the world.  How does the practice of sport make a difference in people’s lives, from young girls and women in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to refugees at a camp in Rwanda, to ordinary citizens in urban centres across the globe, among other populations? Olympism Made Visible proposes to explore these questions through the creative vision of acclaimed international photographers who work at the intersection of fine art and social documentary.

While building an artistic body of high-quality photography as a powerful and lasting contribution to the legacy and patrimony of the Olympic Movement, OFCH also aims to bring positive recognition to organizations and individuals around the world who put Olympism into action by helping to change people’s lives for the better through sport, in often challenging circumstances.

Five Photographers, Five Continents, Five Stories of Olympism in Action

In collaboration with the New York City-based photography director and curator, Amy Pereira, OFCH commissioned five artists over the summer of 2018 to work across five different continents on topics relevant to Olympism in Action’s priority areas, from sports for all, to gender equity, to conflict resolution through sport. The photographers’ challenge was to reveal the Olympic values from their distinctive creative perspective and to illuminate Olympism’s definition of sport as the right of all people to practice it, for the joy, excellence, respect and friendship that it creates and fosters. 

The five locations and topics chosen for this first edition of the project were: