The artist Gabriel Orozco once said “Ping-pong is a game about the universe playing, or it’s a game about how the universe is so arbitrary and how it’s constant.” In his images of table tennis, the photographer Douglas Ljungkvist approaches a similar sense of timelessness, absurdity, and the sublime. A Swede who currently lives and works in New York, Ljungkvist brings a surprising personal vision to the game. A longtime player of the sport, he brings an enthusiast’s inner knowledge and an artist’s subjective in his evocative photos that blur documentary and abstraction, high-art style and low-art fun. Here Ljungvist tells Kspace how he made ping-pong a central subject in his work.

Kspace: While artists from Henry Miller and John Cage to Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gabriel Orozco have all embraced Ping-Pong in their work, what specifically caused you to approach the sport as a subject matter? What does it mean to you? How does table tennis intersect with your other artistic interests?

Ljungkvist: Ping-Pong for me is a “shoot what you know, shoot what you love” project. I grew up playing and watching table tennis in Sweden in the late ‘70s. In the late ‘90s I started playing again in a club in New Jersey. I realized how much I missed playing and loved the camaraderie of the club I played at. Later when I was thinking of a new photography project to start, I decided that Ping-Pong was it. So I went back to my Jersey club, after having moved to Brooklyn, and attended a couple of tournaments.

Then Ping-Pong started getting traction with the cool crowd in New York. Young, hip, good-looking people were playing Ping-Pong while meeting friends over drinks. Bars and other venues were putting together tournaments for a fun night out. So I started going to more and more events to photograph. During that time, the objects of Ping-Pong—tables, equipment, graphics—started to grab my attention. Eventually I ended up with a part of the project that’s more of a formalist study. This has many similarities to my other work—how it encompasses color, space, design, lines, shapes, and form.

Kspace: In your artistic statement, you talk about how in your work you try to go beyond the Bressonian “decisive moment” into something more sublime. At the same time, so much sports photography is about exactly that – the thrill of crossing the finish line seconds before another runner, hitting the ball over the net so quickly the other player misses it. What happens when you divorce that concept from sports photography?

Ljungkvist: I guess I’ve always been comfortable going my own way, or maybe I’m just a late adapter?! I think sports photography is the least interesting form of documentary photography today; maybe it’s the rare exception of having gone backwards as technology has improved. With longer and faster lenses and higher camera ISO tolerances, the goal seems to be to shoot at as high of a shutter speed as possible. It’s like an arms race: when you watch a sporting event all the photographers are lined up for the same shot. Tight compositions of football players catching a ball or soccer players celebrating a goal with the crowds behind them blurred out is not my idea of interesting or compelling photography. As photojournalism has gone towards fine art, sports photography has gone in the opposite direction.

Standard images of Ping-Pong tend to be players staring at the ball during the toss or the follow through of a smash, freezing the action as much as possible. Though parts of my project cover the competition of professional table tennis at tournaments and club play, I don’t consider the project a sports photography one per se. Once you take the decisive moment out of sports photography, it becomes personal, and in my opinion, things start to get interesting. It allows you to study something in an artistic way and not have to worry about missing the winning goal or touchdown. I like to slow things down to ½ second exposures to create long ball streaks if the color of the balls looks good against the backdrop. It also creates interesting motion in the players, almost like a ballet type effect.

Kspace: Does Ping-Pong have any design aspects that make it particularly interesting to photograph? How does it relate to your other work?

Ljungkvist: I love the restrictions and size of the Ping-Pong table space: this includes compositional possibilities, especially when playing with perspective and focus. It’s like the table is its own small world, with borders. The objects constantly satisfy my interest in color, too. I think the space and lines of Ping-Pong tables is attractive to my sense of style and order. There are similarities to Swedish minimalism and design concepts that I was exposed to growing up in a design-crazed country. The photo opportunities are endless.

I’m also drawn to graphics, branding, and beautifully ugly trophies.  Generally, all my work is photographing beauty: beauty the way I see it, which is often vernacular and utilitarian.  From the world of Ping-Pong design, I enjoyed photographing artist Rirkrit Tiravanija’s mirrored Ping-Pong table, Ryan Vanderbilt’s conference room table that converts to a Ping-Pong table, and the Brodmann Blade which you actually wear instead of hold like a traditional racket.

Kspace: What were some of the different Ping-Pong events and games that you shot? How did each different event present different challenges or creative possibilities?

Ljungkvist: I’m not a subscriber to the Düsseldorf School of photography in theory or practice, and I seldom scout venues beforehand. So each scene is observed, composed, and exposed based on its unique characteristics. This appeals to my intuitive yet analytical nature. The most interesting venue I photographed Ping-Pong at was the upstate New York Oneida Correctional Facility. Something that caught my attention behaviorally was that all the prisoners preferred to use two old rackets where the rubber had been stripped off and there was only the sponge separating the wood from the ball despite two brand new rackets being available. These rackets offered me a great photo op with the orange and yellow colors against the cold backdrop of the metal table and cinderblock wall. While I was photographing, the inmates were just like any other bunch of guys having fun around a Ping-Pong table. When I returned home, I looked up the crimes they were in prison for, and found it surreal to have been hanging out with them the night before.

It’s always a blast photographing at SPiN, especially their special events, like last years Halloween party.  It’s the Shangri-La when it comes to table tennis clubs, and has done wonders to elevate the status and perception of the game in New York; having a celebrity part-owner in Susan Sarandon has probably helped, too. I also enjoy outdoor public venues: Bryant Park that has a colorful JOOLA table with a metal divider with holes in it as a net—it produces wonderful shadows. In Barcelona, I photographed several public places and parks that had Ping-Pong tables; I would love to see more of that in New York.

The JOOLA Team Championships in Baltimore proved impressive from a size perspective: the entire bottom floor of the convention center was occupied by more than 150 Ping-Pong tables and over 1,000 players with teams from China, Germany, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and more. One of my favorite shots from there was void of people and required patience and waiting. The organizers had started breaking down the tables, while the final was played at the other end of the building, and all the nets were missing from the tables. This gave the scene an abstract look and wonderful atmosphere, combined with the brutalism style of architecture and pattern of lights. The Bell House in Gowanus Brooklyn was a challenge to photograph due to the club-like low lighting situation. But this allowed me the opportunity to darken the background and show only hands and rackets of the people playing, who were dressed in dark colors. It made for some quiet and eerie images unique for that particular time and place.

Kspace: What are some other sports you might want to capture in images?

Ljungkvist: Having grown up in Sweden, I love soccer and ice hockey. Something that really interests me in soccer is the body language. It’s a language that everyone that has played or watched a lot of soccer understands. I’m exploring assignment opportunities for the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa. I would like to create a colorful, urban, and dynamic daily reportage from multiple locations of the tournament—behind the scenes with teams, the fans, before and after matches. I want to explore how a country gets swept up in soccer mania.

As well, I’m experimenting a bit with hockey by creating conceptual scenes using table hockey players (something else I grew up playing) with a Ping-Pong table as the backdrop in my studio. It’s focusing on the hockey rivalry between Sweden and Finland leading up the Olympics. It’s getting a bit violent and morbid.

Kspace: Backgammon and roller derby are part of your oeuvre as well. What is it about shooting competitive pursuits that appeals to you?

Ljungkvist: Roller derby was more of a fun, one-time thing. I find it more interesting to photograph something I really understand well and love as a personal long-term project.  I have played backgammon competitively for a long time. There are several visual similarities to Ping-Pong in backgammon: lines, color, space, and design. I see the backgammon board as a battlefield, with the troops lined up the same way before every battle (game). Then the game has its own flow, and positions are seldom repeated. I’m also intrigued by the various shapes—the round checkers, square dice, long triangular pips, and rectangle boards. Though I’m not that interested in the backgammon players, I do like to include hands in some images. The hands are the tools of backgammon, while the intellect is the brain.

Kspace: How important is the concept of documentary to your work–as something both to push and pull against?

Ljungkvist: I don’t feel any need to document things the way they are, but rather how I see or perceive them, when it comes to my personal work. Photography for me is all about self expression. Not even my Middletown USA project, which photographs all 16 states with a town named “Middletown”, do I consider a documentary project. It’s a personal journey, searching for the beauty in the ordinary in places far from home and outside of my urban comfort zone.

Kspace: What are the influences that go into your work, both from the art and photography worlds as well as from beyond?

Ljungvist: German photographer Thomas Demand is a new inspiration to some of my more conceptual Ping-Pong work that I’m creating. I have three different size Ping-Pong tables in my studio and a garbage bag full of used balls, and I’m not afraid to use them.  Stephen Shore and William Eggelston’s photography inspires me every day. Edward Hopper and Jean-Michel Basquiat are two of the painters I enjoy. The urban landscape is always inspiring, especially the feeling of newness and discovery I feel when I travel.

Kspace: Where have you shown your work, both in magazines/online and in galleries? How do you feel it is best experienced?

Ljungkvist: I was thrilled to exhibit at the Bridge Art Fair during Art Basel week in Miami in 2008. That was a great experience. I’ve also exhibited at the Center of Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado and Exposure Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.  In print, I’ve had work published in Tate ETC, Black & White Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler, Vagabond, Everywhere Magazine, and more.  Online, my work has been shown at F-stopmagazine.com, Urbanautica.com, Colours Magazine, La Repubblica.it, and Interview, to name a few. I think most of my photography works well across various platforms and channels.  I feel the Ping-Pong project is best suited for a book and large format photography prints.

Kspace: What else are you working on? What ambitions do you want to achieve in your newest work, and how and where can we see the results?

Ljungkvist: I’m going through an interesting phase that is more conceptual and adds studio work of constructed scenes to my repertoire. I’m not sure where it’s coming from but I’m curious to see where it takes me. I have a retro 70’s Ping-Pong shoot in the pipeline with a model, kind of like an advertorial. I recently purchased a portable Ping-Pong table that looks like an old diner table that I plan to setup and photograph in gritty and colorful urban locations. I will be visiting China this spring, where Ping-Pong is the national sport, focusing on public venues and how table tennis fits into Chinese culture. I’m also playing around with the idea of using multiple images (of mine) to create scenes how they might look if Ping-Pong mainstream and the darling of Madison Avenue. The search for the right publisher has begun and will hopefully result in a book.

I hope to team up with a visually progressive brand that’s on the periphery of Ping-Pong to create a commercial campaign using table tennis as the backdrop. I would also enjoy partnering with a gallery to exhibit prints from the Ping-Pong project.  Ping-Pong is coming out of the basements, dorm rooms and garages, and it’s happening now! The news section of my website is always a good place to keep up with what I’m working on and what’s new.

Kspace: How did you get involved in photography? What qualities drew you to the medium?

Ljungkvist: I’ve always been an extremely visual person. I enjoy people watching, making up stories in my head, and translating smells and sounds into visions. I started photographing about four years ago as I was planning a trip to Patagonia.  I felt that a point-and-shoot camera would not do the destination justice, so I invested in a Nikon D70 and enrolled in a class at Photo Manhattan. I was hooked right away!

I quickly fell in love with photography’s work process, which enabled me to use my intuition, curiosity, and observation skills. Oh, and I never made it to Patagonia. That summer I met my future wife Erica and traded in the Patagonia ticket for two tickets to Berlin. Funnily enough, Erica is a photography graduate from SUNY Purchase, but I ended up being the photographer!

Check out the full gallery here.