Craig Millman
Further left, foregrounded, her head in a line with Tonya and Spectator One, sits Spectator Two, also possibly a judge. It seems as if she is sitting because the woman to her right is leaning forward at the same level, while Spectator one rises above. This woman has medium-short blonde hair, blow-dried out, with dark roots or shadows visible beneath. Her expression is not as active as the first judges. Her eyebrows are relaxed, her mouth tight. She wears glasses as well, thick and circular with thin light frames. her nose is small and sharp, her face square, her forehead high. She appears to be in her fifties or older like the other woman. They are cut from the same cloth and could almost be twins if they had similar hairstyles.
She wears a dark blue collared shirt and decorative blue and yellow fabric jacket. We cannot tell the patterning, though it bunches up around her left shoulder suggesting a thickness. She appears to wear a pair of earrings.
Whereas the first spectator leans forward actively in order to investigate the skaters dilemma, this woman has not changed her position in her seat. She merely turns her head to the left facing Tonya’s display. She glances with a blank expression, neither accepting nor condemning. She seems a bit resigned, disdainful.
A woman in red sits to her right facing forward and out of the picture. We can see her black hair, which may or may not be tied, the white of her earring and red of her sports jacket. There is some unidentifiable object to her left, perhaps a cup of coffee, which projects above the barrier.
The background becomes more vague. There’s a white rectilinear object behind the two left figures which could be the chair of the red jacketed woman. Behind that, their head cropped at the top of the image are two fuzzy figures. The left seems to be a blonde woman the right a brunette male or female. Their faces are pink masks, their eyes fuzzy dark goggles, their hair circular helmets. The left figure appears to wear a white garment with a red stripe at the right sleeve. The right figure, whose mouth is indicated slightly, seems to have a white or blue garment. Beyond them we see the hint of a blue curtain or backdrop ending in a dark rectangle of space to the far right of the image which could be an opening in the curtain.
The overall depth of field may be 15 -25 feet. The skater is 5-10 feet away, the first row of judges a few feet back and the back tier 10 to 15 feet further with the blue background behind them.
One interesting feature of the composition is the amalgamation of heads composing the top right quadrant of the image. The heads of the skater, judges and blurry figures are distributed almost like eggs in an egg carton in two rows of three. The skaters torso and leg form a triangle, almost like a cone or cornucopia projecting to the upper right of the image. The Olympic rings project from her rump. The top left slice of the image is composed of rather flat and homogeneous swatches of blurry color while the lower right of the image is nothing but subtle texture and coloration.
Conclusions The historical circumstances surrounding this image are well known. Tonya conspired with her husband and a few others to injure her main American rival, the skater Nancy Kerrigan and was eventually banned from competition. At the time of the photo, Tonya was preparing for the free form part of the individual competition. She did poorly during the compulsories and was in tenth place, and out of medal contention. She arrived late for her free form portion, in distress, with an asthma inhaler in hand. She fiddled with her skate’s laces and fell on her first jump.
This picture was taken as Tonya tearful explained her dilemma to the judges. She claimed the lace had broken during warm-ups and she had not had time to fix it. They allowed her to recompose herself, and participate. She finished in eighth place.
Several versions of this picture are extant. This is one of the least flattering, a crotch shot, focusing on the ungainliness of her pose and highlighting the pouting grimace of her red-queen like visage. It was likely shot at the spur of the moment, however the photographer chose his/her vantage point consciously.
It seems to highlight the pitifulness of the excuse. Here is the competent child/woman athlete, leg up in the air, offering the tiny fragment of a lace as if it explains her behavior. It fittingly captures the pathos of the entire Harding-Kerrigam scenario.