Fighting Spirit: Pia Hagen at Fightzone London
Women’s MMA and Martial Arts Photography in London
These are photographs of the MMA fighter Pia Hagen, made at Fightzone London in Bethnal Green on 31 August 2023. Pia fights at featherweight out of London, and this is training rather than fight night: a changing room portrait, gloves and shin pads going on, sparring rounds, and the bit at the end with her hands on her knees. Three months later she won by TKO in the first round at Cage Warriors Academy South East 33 in Colchester.
The gym gave me two completely different rooms and I used both. The changing room is white tile and daylight, so those frames are plain and still, and she is simply sitting there looking at you. The training floor is the opposite: black walls, black mats, black bags, almost no useful light, so I lit those myself and let the background fall away. Putting the two next to each other is the point. A fighter is not one thing, and a page of nothing but action tells you very little about the person doing it.
Sparring is the hard part to photograph honestly. You cannot direct it, you cannot ask for it again, and in the wrong place you are in the way of somebody's shin. So I shoot it long, from the edge of the mat, and let the second fighter block half the frame rather than moving to clear her, because that is what it looks like from where I am standing. The frame of Pia fitting her gumshield, her partner's shoulder filling the foreground, is the one I would keep.
More combat sport: ringside at fight night, the AOP shortlisted project with Vivien Parsons, Chantelle Reid of GB Boxing before Paris 2024, and Lisa Moore at Lansbury ABC. The full sports photography portfolio is here, and commissions explains how a shoot runs.
If you are a promotion, a gym or a brand that needs fighters photographed as people as well as athletes, get in touch.