Winter Sports

Black ice skaters, photographed by Flo Ngala

black girls in coats and hats, standing in line at an ice rink

Despite the incredible talents of Mabel Fairbanks, Rory Flack Burghart, and Surya Bonaly, black ice skaters are still a rarity and all reasons still lead to racism. In a piece for Teen Vogue, Asia Riddick spoke to New York-based photographer Flo Ngala and her first solo exhibition, called ‘Harlem Ice: The Selects Folder‘. Ngala is a former skater herself, born to Nigerian and Cameroonian parents and her aim with the exhibition was to show Black girls showing their talents on the ice in all their splendour.

“This work and program are so personal and the opportunity to share [it] on the Times platform was a dream, but I also knew there were tons of photos that hit a little deeper and evoked emotion that I felt people needed to see,” Flo tells Teen Vogue. “As a former figure skater, a big part of the sport for me was the emotion that went into it all; it’s something a skater and the audience feel. So when capturing the girls of the program it was not a surprise that those feelings flooded back to me.”

Leave a Reply