Original photo by Guillaume Landry
When it comes to playground basketball photography every shooter in the last decade is essentially copying Kevin Couliau. Whether it’s standing just beyond the top of the key to capture a hoop on an empty court, exploring angles that incorporate the architectural backdrop beyond the gamelines, or globetrotting to Hong Kong, the Philippines and Africa to document emerging cultures, his influence looms large over every photo taken of a basketball court or playground hooper throughout the globe. Couliau is also a director and filmmaker, and his 2013 documentary Doin’ It In The Park, remains an influential staple in hoops documentaries.
The Nantes-born photographer never let his out-of-the-way origin isolate him from connecting with the basketball community. An ‘80s child who came up in the pre-internet era of digging, Couliau’s exposure to basketball and skateboarding in France required hunting for VHS tapes and magazines that would provide insight into the trends and evolutions of American cultures. Those influences, however, were in direct conflict with France’s club basketball system. While he appreciated the academy’s emphasis on team basketball, his coveted VHS tapes like NBA Superstars 2 and the New York City playground basketball documentary Soul In The Hole added Tim Hardaway’s push crossover and Booger Smith’s free-form flare for inventive passing to his game. And his coaches disapproved. They thought he dribbled too much, and ironically that school of thought would go extinct only a few years later with the arrival of Tony Parker in 1999.
“All the stuff I got from New York City basketball culture opened my mind to the possibilities,” he says. “The freedom of playground basketball really impacted my game. All the frustration I had in the club environment, I would get rid of it on the playground.”
Kevin Couliau: Kayonza, Rwanda
Having given up on aspirations to play professionally in France, Kevin went on more skateboarding missions with his older brother David and his friends. Nantes is big enough of a city to be a cultural hub that would draw traveling professional skaters who came with their own documentary teams. “We had guys come in to skate in our city,” he says. “American guys. British guys. They always had a camera guy; a photographer. It was something we didn’t have in basketball culture. We didn’t have a camera guy to go out and shoot us.”
It was Kevin’s first breakthrough idea: become the camera guy in basketball. His brother passed down a 35mm Canon EOS5. He took photos of his playground friends, many of which were African immigrants who, like him, found the club system stifling. He also worked as a salesman in a basketball shop. That’s how he found Bounce magazine, a playground basketball publication run by Bobbito Garcia. Bounce published Kevin’s first photo in 2004, a shot of his friend dunking in Nantes.
In the twenty years since that photo, much has changed for Couliau and for playground basketball documentation. He spent a summer in New York City documenting the culture and history of playground basketball in New York City with Bobbito Garcia which became Doin’ It In The Park. The success of that documentary led to gigs with Nike, SLAM, and the NBA. He traveled to Manila and Dakar, turning his travels into the Asphalt Chronicles zine series. He worked with the basketball non-profit Giants of Africa, and photographed Barack Obama in Kenya. He photographed Kobe Bryant on a Paris rooftop in 2018, and more recently shot portraits of Victor Wembanyama in Paris. He published a photography art book with Common Practice entitled Blacktop Memento: fragments of erosion, and has a career retrospective book with a major publisher forthcoming. Very few sports photographers have managed to transfer their work into art exhibitions. Kevin Couliau has done 12 and counting.
Many noteworthy photographers of playground basketball came well before him. Photographers like Bill Bamberger, Robin Layton, and even dating back further in history with Arthur Tress in the 1960s, William Eggleston and Pete Kuhns in the 1970s, Larry Racioppo and Dawoud Bey in the 1980s (integral to documenting David Hammons), and the artist Barkley L. Hendricks whose basketball photography would inform his paintings. One of the most iconic (and a personal favorite) is a Paul Hosefros photo of children hooping outside of a burning building in the South Bronx. However, in most of these examples the documentarian wasn’t an active participant in the culture, only an anthropological observer satisfying a curiosity of human behavior in congress. Couliau’s photography has always stood out in comparison. Beyond his ability to merge skate photography aesthetics with an attention to the architectural setting, to this day, he still communes as a player first, and then brings out his camera. The result establishes an intimacy as his subjects exude a comfort with the camera because one of their own is behind the lens.
Kevin Couliau: The Philippines
Kevin Couliau: Charenton, France
As for playground basketball documentation at large, the technological advancements in camera phones and a generational shift to TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram Reels, has democratized and globalized the movement. Couliau even credits an early Flickr account as instrumental in circulating his work. Cultural scenes are thriving in far off places like Tokyo, where Couliau has collaborated with the Ballaholic community, and in Kevin’s current home in Paris. All of which Couliau finds inspiring. As someone who watched the early 90s streetball boom lead to the And1 revolution, only to see that collapse into a decade-long vacuum, he’s thrilled to see it come back.
“Because of social media there’s a revival,” he says. “It goes from the guys playing in Paris, to the influencers in the U.S., guys trying to make a name for themselves through social media. It’s bringing a whole layer of culture we didn’t really see before.”
But, in talking to Kevin, I couldn’t help wondering if he ever thought about that brave, and radical decision at 16 years-old to forgo his professional hoops dreams and see what the playground had to offer. He says he thinks about it a lot, admitting “I have regrets.” But, even at such a young age, he carried a principled purity of values and love for basketball that continues to be his creative compass. This deep into his artistic life, it’s clear those values will remain undefeatable.
“I would have loved to play pro. I think it was a question of environment. I never wanted to play for money and I didn’t enjoy the politics of it. That’s what took me off the joy of playing pro. I always played basketball for the love of the game, for the camaraderie, the friendship. I was competitive and I’ve always been competitive, but what I love the most is playing with people I like. When I play basketball it’s important to be surrounded by people you enjoy playing with.”
The following is a lightly edited transcript of my interview with Kevin Couliau from November 2024.
The story of you meeting Bobbito through Bounce is well-documented, but what I haven’t seen is how in the hell did you even get a hold of Bounce in the first place?
We grew up in an era where you had to dig. You had to dig through vinyl and through VHS. I consumed the NBA through VHS because I didn’t have any broadcast channels. I consumed skateboarding and basketball through magazines. When the internet arrived, it was the same approach. We were digging. I was digging for everything related to streetball around the world. Obviously, I was focused on New York City because I was so passionate about the mythology.
In the shop [where I worked], one of my colleagues was doing freelance writing for a basketball magazine. A French magazine. Knowing and meeting this guy made me realize you can write for a magazine. Maybe I can do the same. Write sneaker reviews or playground reviews. Maybe we can use my photos in the magazine.
I found online that Bobbito was releasing the first issue of Bounce magazine. At first I couldn’t order it. It was sold out. I sent them a message with my first photos. That’s how we made the connection. The thing is Bobbito was familiar already. He was in a few skateboarding videos linked to New York. My brother and I knew who Bobbito was.
It’s funny. He touches so many pockets of culture. For me, growing up in Ohio, it was freestyles from the Stretch and Bobbito show ripped off Napster. He became this iconic figure among my friends simply because we would imitate his ooohhweeeee! Everybody gets there a different way. And in each of those spaces he’s the man.
Exactly. It’s incredible. I realized it even more when we were shooting Doin’ It In The Park, going to all these courts, we would arrive on some courts and they would recognize him from NBA2K if they were younger. Or from music, he’s Cucumber Slice. The old guys would know him as Bobbito the Barber. Then, you’ve got some guys knowing him streetball and playing the game. Everywhere we’d go we get layers revealed.
One of my favorite shots of yours is the Kingdome shot from above. Was that from someone’s window? A rooftop? Where did you go to get that shot?
It was on the rooftop of one of the buildings. We had a few rooftop experiences with Bobbito for Doin’ It In The Park. We were trying to get so many points of view. We managed to go into the buildings behind West 4th Street. We did the project towers at Rucker Park. This one was interesting because when we arrived on the rooftop there was the yellow tape, the police yellow tape. Just when I was about to shoot my camera, it blacked out. There was no explanation. It was like a curse tied to whatever happened up there. I switched batteries. Nothing.
Kingdome is right behind Bobbito’s house. We used to spend a lot of time at Kingdome. We knew lots of the kids that were playing there. One of them basically opened the rooftop for us. It was a pre-drone era. You had to earn your shots. It wasn’t as easy as now. Kingdome is special. It’s definitely my favorite court in New York for so many reasons.
Your work reminds me of books like Heaven Is A Playground by Rick Telender and Big Game, Small World by Alexander Wolff. The same ideas, but through photography. Did you ever get to encounter these authors who’ve done the literary work of documenting playground culture and the global reach of basketball?
Alex Wolff and Rick Telender are definitely mentors of mine. We interviewed both of them for Doin’ It In The Park. I couldn’t express enough the respect I felt for these guys. Both of them have traveled the world and written about basketball on a global scale. Especially Alex. I’m honestly walking in Alex’s steps and trying to be his eyes in some way. Trying to be a visual representation of what he has done. His books have influenced me so much. He is a pioneer. He pioneered this concept of exploring the world through basketball. This is something that has been a common thread for a lot of us basketball players who’ve been traveling.
Alex being a ball player and traveling to places like Bhutan and the Philippines before everybody else, it’s something that is not enough celebrated. He’s still as passionate as he was back then as he is today. These two guys, when I see them, they have massive respect for my work too. I’m honestly just trying to put in visuals or emotion what these guys have been writing for so long. These guys have the archaeological files on basketball that we need to now update. What has evolved since Big Game, Small World?
Is there a place in Big Game, Small World that you’ve visited specifically that was like ‘damn, this is just how Alex described it?’ or even a place that has moved well-past what Alex experienced?
The Philippines is well-described. But I think when you go there, it doesn’t even make sense for an entire country to play basketball like that. It’s just like what’s happening.
I was thumbing through your book Asphalt Chronicles: Manila today. Still feeling like it’s an impossible place.
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense. I think what I love most about traveling is that you see the game impacting communities and countries and societies in so many different ways. Honestly, that’s really what I enjoy the most. Each country brings me a different aspect of the game.
The Philippines is definitely about resilience and the do-it-yourself culture. Playing the game no matter what. It’s the most pure expression of passion for basketball. In New York there’s definitely the sense of competition. Even consumerism in some way. In Africa, there’s resilience as well, but it’s more about ambition. Overcoming rough situations and educating people in the most profound way, and the most obvious way sometimes. I think that’s why I’m so passionate. Every travel is different. It’s a privilege to be able to witness it all.
In the last five years, an Instagram community has emerged around basketball photography. What are your impressions of the community?
You’re talking to somebody who basically started this. Not started this, but I was doing this before Instagram. Other than the guys who were shooting on film in the 70s and 80s, I started shooting empty basketball courts with my Hasselblad medium format. And using the photos on Instagram. Now, you have Hypecourts and Hypebeast getting on it and it has collapsed.
You have the new trends and new photographers shooting playground basketball. Which is great, I think. The more we are the better. For me it’s less work to find more basketball courts. [laughs]
There’s a lot of people basically copying each other. Which is the problem of social media. I don’t see enough people trying to bring a new lens, a new perspective, a new treatment, use different cameras. Use large format cameras. Why not? Use 3D cameras. Use stuff that nobody has used. It’s something that needs to be done to bring a new perspective. I see guys who are about shooting the most courts in the world or aerial shots. It’s not about the numbers. It’s about why you do this? What is your message? What do you bring that is different?
The positive thing is I’ve seen guys who started in photography and now they are renovating courts, reactivating communities, and they want to do films. I think Doin’ It In The Park had a big impact on a lot of young filmmakers. We were part of the community. We were ball players. We showed all these guys to just pick up a camera and go do your film. Get on a bike with a camera in your backpack and go film.
It reminds me of being in awe of your Hong Kong photo. Then, seeing the Hong Kong photo become a simulacrum. What I will say is, you keep evolving. Blacktop Momento is such an evolution. What was the seed of that idea to zoom in?
It’s not the next phase. It’s just one component of my work. I think you and I share the same attention to details. When you play the game, the texture of the asphalt under your feet, the sound of a metal backboard, the ring of a chain net, the erosion and the rust on the hoop. All these little things are part of the culture. The more you play and explore, it’s part of the experience. Blacktop Memento was just a tribute to the asphalt and the courts in a more abstract way. I’m trying to elevate basketball photography to bring it to art galleries. To try to find the art. Fine art doesn’t care much about basketball unless you’re doing an art installation. Sport photography is not very well represented in the art world.
I’m really attached to basketball court design too. I love seeing the evolution of it. From the FIBA court to an NBA court to a playground court. These are the things that make the game special.
You develop a language that is similar to people who love different eras of architecture. You can look at a basketball hoop and know it’s in Kyoto because of the shape. You know a New York City backboard. You become obsessive over little details and it’s a great feeling to meet other people who share that obsession.
I want to do a sequel to Blacktop Memento, but only do it on backboards. I want to do Backboard Memento. Mostly about metal backboards in New York. Just to bring the textures and the rust and details, as a tribute to these historic backboards that are slowly disappearing from New York. They are the heart and soul of New York. I’m so frustrated to see them disappear from the playgrounds. I think fiberglass belongs to the indoor courts and not outdoors.
What is the origin of the mantra the park is my church?
I started shooting courts that were near churches. I had this thing where basketball was a spiritual thing. We share the same philosophy on this. I always wanted to illustrate that visually. Bobbito came up with that claim. He said, ‘Basketball is a religion. The park is my church.’ on the original pitch for Doin’ It In The Park. We did t-shirts with that. I kept it. It became my hashtag on instagram. I use it everywhere.
It was just a way to immortalize the courts and present them as sanctuaries. That’s exactly what they are for ball players. It maybe doesn’t seem universal enough because the church is a Christian thing.
Sanctuary is a long word.
True. Also because I was shooting with my medium format camera, the whole process of shooting on film, it was a spiritual thing. You take more time than you would with a digital camera. You establish a relationship with the hoop and the landscape. It reinforced the whole spiritual approach to the game and act of photography.
You get hired to travel the world. Do you still have those moments where it feels spiritual, even though it may be a commercial job?
It does. For some weird reason. Not everywhere. But some courts when you step on them, you can feel that it is or used to be an important place for a community. When I was in the Philippines in 2022, I went to this island called Siargao, which is a surfing island, but they have so many basketball courts on a small island. There was this concrete slab beat up by tropical storms and hurricanes. You could tell the court was old. There was a mystic vibe to it. There was gray concrete with lots of cracks. The herbs were growing in the middle of the cracks with big pillars around it. There was a big fire somewhere, so there was smoke. I had this feeling of a sacred place, like you would say. Some places when you go you can feel that energy and vibe. Not everywhere, but honestly I get more bored shooting action NBA games and leagues, than shooting outdoors. I think playground basketball is something I can never get bored of.
You shoot that arena and it looks the same every fucking game. It’s a replicated and controlled experience. You go to that park five times a week and each day is a different sunset and different people who show up, different clouds, whatever.
I’m a visual artist too. I try to tell stories. I tend to prefer going to a court that is damaged and has a history. I don’t like courts that are brand new. I don’t like courts that are renovated. No offense to my friends at Project Backboard. I think what’s important is to tell a story through my photos. Either from the landscape in the back, or the cracks on the ground, or the rust on the hoop, that’s what excites me. Knowing the court has been used. Battles on the court. That guys broke their knees and ankles. I see these courts as arenas for gladiators. I’m more interested in the erosion and the damage.
You had the chance to photograph Kobe Bryant on a Paris rooftop, a very iconic photo. Can you tell me about that day?
I was super lucky to be a part of that shoot. Kobe came in 2018 for two or three days. He did a youth basketball clinic with boys and girls. He was super generous. He spent all day training kids. He spoke in like five languages to different media from across Europe. Impressive. He went to a PSG [Paris Saint-Germain Football Club] training just to analyze the soccer training. He didn’t care about meeting the stars. He just wanted to learn about the training, which is so interesting.
We had this photoshoot that was planned on Le Grand Palais, which is this historic building in Paris. I wasn’t the main photographer. Cyril Masson shot the commercial stuff for Nike. I was the second knife. I honestly prefer the photos I did because they were in natural light and we had a beautiful sunset. Kobe basically walked on the rooftop. I love these photos. It’s so hard to shoot these guys outside of an NBA arena, outside of an NBA world, outside of a Nike commercial shoot. It’s really rare to have these guys, especially an icon like Kobe, in a natural setting. These photos have always been some of my favorites. They obviously became even more iconic because of the tragic accident. Sometimes as a photographer you don’t realize what you’re capturing in the moment.
It made me think a lot about when I am in these situations with high profile athletes, how to maximize my time with them to capture these moments. The Kobe shoot helped me for when I was with Obama in Kenya. I tried to take photographs that could last and weren’t marked to a specific event.
Should having a relationship with the game, being a player, be a prerequisite to being a photographer of the game?
I think so. For what I’m doing, going from playground to playground, it’s important to know the codes of the culture. By that I mean sometimes I would play with the locals before I start photographing. It’s important to get accepted by the community and try to be curious about what you're documenting. This goes for street photographers too. It’s easy to capture something and move away and don’t try to understand what you’re shooting.
Why in the Philippines do they play all day and build their own hoops? That’s something you need to investigate. Where does that come from? Why does Hong Kong have 2,500 basketball courts? This is something I’m investigating because I’m curious about that. I think that’s a different approach than someone who is just a basketball fan. I’ve never done this for the likes or to build an audience. The audience came naturally. It’s important to be true to yourself. As a basketball player, I know how the game has impacted my life. I think it has helped me build the body of work I’ve built throughout the years.
All photography was used with permission from Kevin Couliau and is not permitted for further use. Follow Kevin Couliau on Instagram.
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