{"title":"Beyond the Finish Line: Images, Evidence, and the History of the Photo-Finish by Jonathan Finn (review)","authors":"P. Westin","doi":"10.5406/21558450.49.2.15","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Jonathan Finn’s 2021 monograph, Beyond the Finish Line: Images, Evidence, and the History of the Photo-Finish, analyzes the history of photographic technology at sports’ finish lines. Finn, trained as an art historian and now a professor of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, complicates the seemingly mundane task of capturing the finish line. Informed by scholarship in science and technology studies and sport history, Finn argues that the photo-finish is not, and has never been, an objective reflection of sporting reality. Instead, Finn contends, the photo-finish is a cultural artifact—the product of a complex, ever-changing, network of human and technological actors. Through their pursuit of an objective reflection of the finish line, photo-finish proponents have translated the finish into something else. The photo-finish, Finn argues, is a mediated representation of the event, disconnected from the event itself.","PeriodicalId":38734,"journal":{"name":"Journal of sport history","volume":"49 1","pages":"188 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of sport history","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5406/21558450.49.2.15","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Jonathan Finn’s 2021 monograph, Beyond the Finish Line: Images, Evidence, and the History of the Photo-Finish, analyzes the history of photographic technology at sports’ finish lines. Finn, trained as an art historian and now a professor of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, complicates the seemingly mundane task of capturing the finish line. Informed by scholarship in science and technology studies and sport history, Finn argues that the photo-finish is not, and has never been, an objective reflection of sporting reality. Instead, Finn contends, the photo-finish is a cultural artifact—the product of a complex, ever-changing, network of human and technological actors. Through their pursuit of an objective reflection of the finish line, photo-finish proponents have translated the finish into something else. The photo-finish, Finn argues, is a mediated representation of the event, disconnected from the event itself.