Charles Fréger had already photographed wrestlers in his home town of Rouen. He was also familiar with Eadweard Muybridge’s chronophotographic plates and Francis Bacon’s polyptichs. In this case, in the course of a residence granted by the city of Clermont-Ferrand, he set out to make portraits of wrestlers frozen in mid-action while performing a hold, including the now forbidden full nelson. Images of entwined bodies come one after the other like studies in form. The image he sought was a fusion of bodies, as the title of the series suggests: two entities side-by-side and becoming one. After making the photographs he mounted them in triptychs, which makes the reference to Bacon even more explicit. With 2Nelson, Fréger worked in the opposite direction to that taken by Francis Bacon. Keeping the image of the painting in the forefront of his mind, he set about trying to create yet another document which might have inspired Bacon.
