For this young photographer, born in Switzerland and raised between Paris and Senegal, photographing athletes means, first and foremost, removing them from the merely performative dimension. Through the use of portraiture and his background in the fashion world, Henry humanizes his athletic subjects. They are no longer statuesque, iconic figures, but human beings through whom we can observe a culture and its unique characteristics from a privileged perspective. With their gestures, rituals, the environment surrounding them, and the communities to which they belong, these figures convey something that goes beyond the result, whether victory or defeat.

It is precisely this consciousness that defines much of Henry Lamine Diagne’s photographic practice. Portraiture meets documentary; editorial photography embraces the unpredictability of observation; fashion enters the world of sports without reducing it to a mere aesthetic surface. His method thus proceeds through a constant alternation between construction and observation. What matters to him is that something authentically human remains in the image, something that can be recognized even by those who have never directly experienced sports. His photography thereby becomes an exercise of intimacy and interpretation.

Sport, fashion or campaigns, what first educated your eye? Was it photography itself, cinema, the street, your family, music, or the cities you lived in? And how did photography first enter your life?

“I grew up in Switzerland. My mother is Swiss but my father is from Senegal, and because of his work we travelled a great deal when my brother and I were young. My mother was always very attentive to exposing us to art: she would take us to museums and exhibitions, and she almost invariably carried a small Nikon F100 film camera with her. I think that was probably the first thing that made me curious about photography. I would take her camera and photograph my younger brother, then whatever happened to be around me. I would photograph my neighbourhood, my family and the people around us. I suppose that was where it all began.

I think I got my first personal camera when I was around 13. Later, I attended photography school in Switzerland, which I finished when I was around 19. By then, I already knew that I wanted to explore fashion, so I moved to Paris. In my mind, Paris was almost the Real Madrid of fashion. I thought that If I could make it there, I could make it everywhere. It represented the highest level. I had very little idea of what I was actually entering, but I remember thinking: this sounds difficult, so I am going to do it. I can do it. I began working as a lighting assistant and, very quickly, I was given an extraordinary number of opportunities. In Switzerland, I had been trained in lighting in a very rigorous way. The working culture was extremely disciplined: you arrived on time, you remained focused, you were precise and consistent. That helped me enormously when I arrived in France. I came in with the mentality of wanting to do everything properly. Soon I started travelling with photographers, learning the profession by working in their shadow. That experience also made me understand that photography was a real industry. Until then, many of my teachers had warned me that it was an extremely difficult profession and that there was no guarantee I would ever be able to make a living from it. But when I started working with established photographers and lighting their sets, I could see that many of them made it.

I remember thinking that I wanted that kind of life—not because I ever dreamt of being rich, but because financial stability could provide a certain freedom. It could allow me to travel, to move, to make my own work. Those things are connected. So I began to think that perhaps I could use that freedom to pursue other projects that mattered to me. Then Covid happened. At the time I was still working as a lighting assistant, and afterwards I felt that I needed to challenge myself. The interruption gave me an opportunity to reset, to ask myself what I actually wanted to do and, more importantly, what kind of photographs I wanted to make. After that period, I essentially restarted my career, this time as a photographer.

Fashion was naturally the first field I entered because I already had connections and relationships within that world. But the more interesting question became: now that I am the photographer, what do I actually want to say? I went to Senegal and began photographing friends there. Some of them were wrestlers, and wrestling has an enormous cultural presence there. I started photographing these friends and, through them, I also met several marabouts, who represent the spiritual dimension surrounding the sport. I spent time with them, and I suddenly realized how interesting it was to photograph an athlete not simply as an athlete, but as an entry point into an entire culture. The sport became a way of reaching something deeper. Without initially intending to, I found myself photographing a very significant spiritual dimension of my own culture. I had never really had access to that world before.

Has sport always been part of your life, or did it only become one of your interests later, once you began to consider it as a photographic subject?

“I think I probably inherited my love of football from my father. We used to play a lot, and sport brought with it a very strong competitive mentality. My earliest memories of it are connected to this idea of wanting to be better than I had been the day before, of trying to improve every time I stepped onto the pitch. My father would come and watch me and my brother play. For a long time, it became one of the principal ways in which I expressed myself. But at that stage there was nothing particularly specific or intellectual about my relationship with sport. I simply loved it.

Growing up in Switzerland, we had access to many different sports, so I also played tennis, ran, cycled and tried all kinds of activities. Sports were simply everywhere in my childhood. What is interesting, however, is that none of that was initially connected to photography. When I first began taking pictures, it never occurred to me that I might one day photograph athletes. In that sense, I actually arrived at sport photography through fashion.”

Your work often seems drawn to what feels slightly suspended: a body, a gesture, a moment that exists somewhere between action and stillness. Are you particularly interested in these in-between instants? If so, why?

“From the very beginning, I wanted to avoid the spectacular. I feel that a great deal of sports photography is concerned with spectacular moments and spectacular actions, whereas I have always been much more interested in approaching athletes through portraiture and in revealing their sensitivity, their doubts, their vulnerability and their uncertainty. Those are dimensions of athletes that, in my opinion, remain relatively absent from mainstream sports culture. There is often a tendency to represent them almost as superhuman figures, when in reality they are far more complex than that. I approach athletes first and foremost as human beings. I am always looking for those moments in between. Of course, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but there is an enormous emotional territory between those two outcomes. So many things happen before the victory or after the defeat, and I feel that this intermediate space is still not being shown often enough, or at least not always in the way I would like to see it represented.”

At Athleta Magazine, we try to approach sport not only as performance, but as a cultural and artistic language. When did you first begin to look at sport as an image rather than simply as an event or a form of performance?

“When I decided that I wanted to become a photographer, I suddenly had to think about who I was, but also about the way other people perceived me. While photographing wrestlers in Senegal, I realised that athletes could function almost as cultural figures. I think that was probably my first real understanding of sport in that sense. Until then, I had mostly been working on editorials and campaigns. 

When I began producing photographs for myself, as personal work rather than for a client, I had to reconsider the entire way I approached image-making. When you work commercially as a creative, you are always conscious of the different elements a brand needs or expects to see within an image. There are certain details, references and requirements that you naturally have to incorporate. When you make something for yourself, however, there is no longer a brand telling you what the image needs to contain. You have to decide what matters, what you want to retain and what you actually want the photograph to communicate. I think that process forced me to think for myself in a much deeper way. Then, through the wrestling project, I realised that sport could become an opening onto something much larger than action itself.”

Sport is often photographed through speed, spectacle and victory. Your visual world feels quieter, more atmospheric, more attentive to the human presence surrounding the action. What do you feel remains under-photographed in sport, and which emotions do you try to evoke through your sports photography?

“Through sport, you can communicate emotion, and emotion is something people can recognise regardless of whether or not they are athletes themselves. When I look at a photograph I have made, I am waiting for it to give me a particular feeling. Whatever that emotion may be, I want someone looking at the image to be able to recognise something of their own experience within it. If the photograph contains sadness, for example, I want the viewer to feel that sadness. They don’t need to be athletes in order to relate to it. For me, it is largely about creating the conditions for an emotion to emerge and then allowing people to receive it in their own way.

When I approach an athlete, for example, I might say: ‘Do you remember a moment when you felt like this? All right, let us try to bring that feeling towards the camera.’ Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. If it does not, I may simply allow them to continue doing what they are doing, and at that point I will almost become a documentary photographer, observing rather than directing. Then, I might realise that a particular composition is visually very strong and ask them to repeat a step, to stand in a particular way or to move slightly differently. Suddenly, the process becomes closer to a fashion editorial. I enjoy moving between those different modes of image-making—documentary, editorial, portraiture—and understanding what each of them can bring to the photograph. Most of the time, however, is a portrait of an athlete because I want to reveal something about their attitude and character. For that reason, I usually take time to understand the person standing in front of my camera. I try to help them bring something internal into the image, something they have genuinely experienced. Athletes live through these emotions with extraordinary intensity, so they often understand quite quickly what I am asking. It requires a little more time, perhaps, but moving back and forth between the language of editorial photography and that of documentary photography is something I find incredibly enjoyable.”

Having worked in the world of fashion, do you also see the athlete as a performer, as a body in motion, as a character, or as something else entirely?

“I feel that every athlete has their own personality. The way they practise their sport is also, to a certain extent, the way they present themselves to the world. Clothing is only the most immediately visible part of that identity. Whenever you photograph an athlete, you are inevitably photographing fashion, movement and tension at the same time. In my mind, those elements have always been interconnected. I do not really feel the need to place myself within a single photography category. Within one project, for instance, you might encounter a very classical portrait that is simply a portrait, and then suddenly come across an image that feels much more overtly connected to fashion. I find it very stimulating to move between these different territories and to continually reinvent the relationships between them.”

Your work often moves between fashion and sport, two worlds that both use the body to communicate identity. Do you see them as separate languages, or as two expressions of the same visual research?

“I think imagery in general has increasingly moved beyond its traditional categories. Different visual worlds are beginning to overlap and connect with one another, and I find that incredibly exciting. If they remained entirely separate, I think there would eventually be something repetitive about them. I really enjoy seeing those worlds merge. When you look, for example, at someone like Kylian Mbappé becoming an ambassador for Dior, to me that feels significant. It makes complete sense. Athletes today are obviously enormously influential figures, but beyond that, they also embody certain values and cultural meanings. I find this convergence between sport and fashion fascinating because it creates another way of reading the contemporary world. One visual language enters another, and in doing so they can produce something new.”

Your work often seems to move through cities, communities and cultural crossings. How important is geography and local culture to your photography? And how have different places shaped the way you see sport and the way you photograph it?

“For me, travelling means having to reconsider my surroundings every single time, and I find that extremely beautiful. You arrive somewhere, have to learn how to read a new environment, understand how it functions, and then try to translate what you have understood into photography. That process is probably one of the reasons I enjoy travelling so much. If I go to Turkey to photograph an athlete, it may take me a week or two simply to begin understanding why people practise the sport in a particular way, what surrounds it culturally, and what those gestures mean within that specific environment. I find that process incredibly stimulating. Photography forces me to spend time with people whose worlds are completely different from my own.

Growing up in Switzerland and also spending significant periods of my life in Senegal had a profound influence on me. Dakar and Paris, in particular, became part of my creative process; they are places where I learnt how to develop and process ideas. Switzerland is equally important because it is where I grew up. I would say that those three places have deeply shaped my taste and, more broadly, the way I approach photography.”

Sport imagery today is produced in enormous quantities: campaign images, social content, match photography, personal branding. Do you think this abundance has made sports photography more creative, or more repetitive?

“I do see a lot of images that look very similar, to be honest. But overall, when I look at the new generation of brands and at the sports that are becoming increasingly culturally visible, I also see an enormous amount of imagination. The way certain brands and athletes present themselves is often very exciting to me, so I remain quite optimistic. Of course, there are many images that repeat the same ideas and visual formulas. But then you encounter something that feels genuinely different and immediately good. Sometimes the underlying idea is not even radically new; what changes is the way it has been executed. Just a different styling, for example, can completely transform an image. Even within an established visual vocabulary, there is still an enormous amount of room for personality and invention.”

What do you think contemporary sports culture still needs to move beyond?

“I think everyone dreams, in some way, of being free. Sport can represent a way towards that freedom. It gives people an opportunity, however temporary, to step outside their normal lives and express themselves differently. I think that is partly why the wider culture is so interested in sport at the moment. A lot of people spend most of the year working, with perhaps only a few weeks of holiday, following routines in which there is not always much space for personal expression. Sport can become one of the moments in which they are able to express themselves physically and emotionally. It also gives them the opportunity to meet other people and to become part of a community built around a shared practice. In that sense, sport can function almost as a refuge. When I look at contemporary sports culture and the imagery surrounding it, I think it is moving in an interesting direction.”

Which sport have you not yet had the opportunity to photograph in depth, but would like to explore next?

“I recently started playing golf, and I fell in love with the sport. I have only been playing for around six months, so everything still feels new to me, and I would love to explore photographic opportunities within that world. For the moment, though, tennis is probably my main playground. I find it an incredibly elegant sport, but at the same time it has become deeply connected to contemporary culture.. There is a great deal happening around tennis, and I feel there is still so much visual territory to explore. That process of reinvention is something I find extremely interesting.”