Enduring desire Nuns & Boxers

By Jim Birmingham/reporter

Focusing on nuns and boxers, the Enduring Desire art exhibit is on display in the East Fork Gallery on Trinity River Campus until April 17.

Candice Chase, the creator of the photo exhibit, has high-resolution, digital-format
archival prints taken over a five-year period.

The images show a variety of color or black and white prints with some taken in the Dallas area.

Chase said it was her initial curiosity that led her to choosing these two subjects.

“I was shooting on another job, and I saw a nun standing there at a school,” she said. “I had

never seen a nun in Dallas. It was so weird, so I went up to her and said, ‘Can I shoot your picture?’”

According to her artist statement, “Chase has spent five years capturing images of boxers and nuns in a warrior likeness, encompassing the struggles, courage and strengths. Their training, their education and their assignments in the world show us their interior desires.”

The photographs focus on boxers at various points in their practices and tournaments, featuring both professional and amateur fights, as well as nuns performing various tasks and services.

“Over the years, I’ve seen different sets of boxers go from amateur to pro,” Chase said, “or from amateur to real life where they get married and have kids.”

Each image captures a specific moment in the subject’s lives, capturing their paths of desire — be it an image of a young boxer in the ring practicing for a fight or a group outside jumping rope or a boxer in the ring during a tournament throwing a fierce punch.

Chase captures the movement and technique of the sport with skill in each image.

She also captures the passion, happiness and dedication of nuns for her exhibit and has many interesting images around the subject matter.

“Every day, they [the nuns] have discipline and practice. They do things that I wouldn’t normally do,” she said. “They choose a very disciplined life. I find it kind of courageous. It’s very intense.”

Chase provided a parallel between the discipline of the nuns and that of the boxers.

“They work on an interior prayer life that helps them serve other people like orphans or patients in a hospital. The boxer — he’s trying to sculpt and get his muscles to withstand something,” she said.

“This body of work brings you into an intimate scope of turning toward the personal path of the boxer and the nun while giving overall contrast of which takes more endurance or constant movement toward carving out the path.”

Chase is a Dallas native with more than 20 years of photography experience. Having begun her career as a freelance sports photographer, she now focuses on portraits and documentary subjects.

She donates to many charitable events, including a documentary project that benefited the International Refugee Center.

Chase’s other projects include Constant Pressure, a collection including images of bull riding, rugby, boxing and roller derby and also a collection of architectural interiors of cathedrals, basilicas and other religious structures from the United States to Italy.

The gallery is open during normal college operating hours.