Appears in SLAM Issue 240. Published on October 21, 2022 at slamonline.com
94 feet of uneven asphalt is one of the most intimate environments that hoopers find themselves in. Barely visible three-point lines. Cracked and shifted baselines. Sun-faded half-court circles. Weeds sprouting from the sidelines. Chipped backboards with rusted chainlink nets. The basketball court is a ravishing display of creative geometry meeting human erosion, a concept Kevin Couliau has been obsessed with for years.
The co-director of the critically acclaimed and award-winning pick-up ball documentary Doin It In The Park—what’s good Bobbito!—has long since captured and given voice to the beauty that resides within the game from behind the lens.
Having spent the last 20 years searching for the perfect basketball court, the near-impossible task has taken the hoops fanatic to some of the most heralded environments in the basketball ecosystem. We’re talking from The Mecca’s Rucker Park to Uganda and Ghana.
Enlisting stills of outdoor courts to discuss our abstract interaction with the local asphalt and its presiding colors, Couliau has retraced through decades worth of personal archives for his first published work titled Blacktop Memento: fragments of erosion. (READ THE FULL STORY HERE.)