Kenneth Bamberg

I understood the work the moment an oil wrestler took me to the ground in Turkey. There was no watching it from the edge. I started where they'd put me, on the ground, skin against skin.

I photographed oil wrestlers through the summer of 2011, at training and at tournaments in villages across the country. I stayed with them, travelled with them, trained beside them. Any other way and the pictures wouldn't have come; the trust was made out of closeness, repetition and sweat.

It's a serious craft, and the leather trousers are the heart of it. Control comes from working an arm down inside the other man's kispet for leverage. The one place the hand can't go, inside the leather, is the genitals. You win by turning him until his navel faces the sky.