An Exhibition Presented by Salomon
A city never is just what it was built to be. While urban infrastructure is designed with particular functions in mind, people rarely interact with their surroundings exclusively according to their original purpose. A skateboarder sees a flight of stairs and a railing differently from a commuter. Artists might see a surface as an opportunity for self-expression. Runners and cyclists understand the rhythm of the city differently than those who don’t. This is the idea we got after visiting Salomon’s SYNC: A Study of Movement. Rather than documenting the race itself, Salomon presented a different perspective on the five boroughs runners will pass through. By powering a photography exhibition by Sébastien Lorsbach and Julien Caldarone, Salomon reminds us a chance to slow down and look closer at the people, cultures, and daily rhythms that give these places their character.
In New York City, where the boundaries between everyday life and public culture intersect, the built environment becomes a space that is continually reinterpreted by the people who inhabit it. This is what makes the NYC Marathon such a striking example of this relationship. Transforming the streets of NYC from infrastructure for everyday circulation, into a shared stage for movement.
This broader interpretation of movement also reflects the thinking behind Salomon’s involvement in powering the exhibition. Traditionally associated with performance and outdoor sport, the brand uses SYNC to explore a wider relationship between movement, culture in everyday life. By bringing together individuals whose practice extend beyond conventional athletics, or the brand’s core sports, the exhibition considers how movement can connect communities through shared relationships with the spaces they inhabit.
This idea brings cities to life: streets, sidewalks, lamp posts, parks, and other elements of the urban environment are continually reinterpreted by the people who use them. In each instance, the physical environment takes on a meaning beyond its original purpose, shaped by the people who occupy it. The distinction is not simply between function and creativity, but between the prescribed uses of a space and the possibilities people discover within it. Through repetition, improvisation, and shared practice, everyday environments acquire new cultural meanings.
New York City embodies this principle like none other: its stoops and public seating become informal gathering places for chess, conversation, and street performance; lamp posts, utility boxes, and other surfaces become canvases for stickers, community announcements; and walls and building facades become canvases for murals, graffiti, and other artistic interventions. In this sense, the city is never entirely finished. While its physical structure provides the foundation, the people moving through them continually shape what those structures mean.
What makes the NYC Marathon so special is because the transformation extends beyond an individual object, or a particular subculture. Entire streets acquire new purpose, becoming spaces for athletic performance, spectatorship, and collective participation.
These alternative uses of urban space reveal that a city’s identity is not simply built into its architecture, but continually shaped by those who inhabit it. New York City wouldn’t be the same without the people that make it what it is. Understanding that requires looking beyond its structures to the people whose everyday movements give them meaning.
SYNC: A Study of Movement was created with capturing that in mind. Interested in visual culture and the way movement shapes our perception of a place, photographers Sébastien Lorsbach and Julien Caldarone set out ten days before the NYC Marathon in order to capture this. Across the five boroughs, they document a chess player, a bike messenger, a skateboarder, a runner, and an artist. Though their practices differ, each offers a distinct way of engaging with the urban environment. Through these individuals, SYNC considers movement as a broader expression of how people occupy, navigate, and transform their urban surroundings.
The photographs presented also exist as a reflection of this idea. As photographers, Sébastien Lorsbach and Julien Caldarone move at a different rhythm to those running tomorrow. Extending its interest in the relationship between sport and culture, Salomon’s vision looks beyond athletic performance to the everyday movements and creative practices that shape a city’s identity. Their unique perspective is showcased here, reminding us that running is not only about covering a course, but about entering into a relationship with the world that surrounds us. From the artist finding a canvas in an overlooked surface, to the chess player looking for a seat worthy of a throne, these interactions reveal how people continually assign new meanings to the environments they inhabit.
In addition, the exposition utilizes the space similarly to the ideas reflected in their work. Instead of just hanging the photographs on the wall, both photographers present the photographs using the entirety of the exposition space to their ability. Exposed on the walls, hung like sheer curtains, and printed on the floor, the arrangement changes the way guests engage with the material. In doing so, the exhibition itself challenges the expected functions of its surroundings. It invites visitors to reconsider how images—and the spaces containing them—can be experienced.
This is what SYNC: A Study of Movement managed to capture so perfectly. Through a photographic lens, we’re given time to slow down and process how different people use movement to engage with the city. Shifting our attention from movement as a spectacle to movement as part of ordinary life. Occurring right before the marathon, it provides an opportunity to reflect on what happens when the interaction between city infrastructure and movement becomes a citywide public event.
The New York City Marathon visibly demonstrates this idea on an urban scale, transforming the way people experience the streets of New York. Repurposing streets as a course for thousands of runners, while sidewalks become gathering places for spectators. While the city’s infrastructure remains largely unchanged, its function and atmosphere shift dramatically.
Running here becomes a public performance: streets providing the stage, runners supplying movement, and crowds lining the route become active participants in the spectacle. However, the marathon’s significance extends beyond the athletes crossing the finish line. Residents, volunteers, and local communities all experience the event through their own relationships with the city. For some, the race offers an opportunity to participate in a shared experience, as a runner, volunteer, or even spectator; for others, it changes the routines through which they ordinarily navigate their neighbourhoods. These different perspectives coexist within the same transformed environment.
The New York City Marathon’s relationship with the city changed significantly in 1976, when the race expanded beyond Central Park. Having been originally established in 1970 as a series of loops around the park, the marathon was reimagined as a route through the city itself. Coinciding with the United States Bicentennial, The New York City Marathon transformed the event from a local road race into something that reflected New York City’s relationship with movement on a much broader scale.
Fifty years later, this milestone provides the context for SYNC: A Study of Movement. By following the marathon’s route through all five boroughs, Sébastien Lorsbach and Julien Caldarone revisit the geography that has defined the race since 1976. However, rather than focusing on the event itself, their photographs turn attention towards the people who inhabit these spaces throughout the year. It arrives at a moment when the city reflects on five decades of the marathon’s presence, offering a perspective that looks beyond the runners to the communities and everyday practices that give the route its character.
The route moves through an assortment of residential streets, commercial districts, bridges, and neighbourhoods, each with its own character and relationship with the city, placing the surrounding communities at the center of the experience. Therefore, the five-borough course reflects an understanding of the city as something experienced through its people and the spaces they inhabit. By connecting these places through movement, it reinforces the principle that New York City is not a collection of separate destinations, observed differently by different cultures, but as an interconnected environment.
Ultimately, the city is never simply what it was built to be. Its identity exists just as much as much in the ways people move through it. As the New York City Marathon makes this relationship visible on a citywide scale, Salomon highlights those subcultural everyday interactions with our environment which makes New York what it is. Their exhibition, SYNC: A Study of Movement, reminds us to attention to the smaller, everyday interactions that often go unnoticed.
