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For a year, French photographer Alexis Berg and his brother Frédéric, a journalist, traveled the world, collecting imagery from 13 epic trail ultras, including the Western States 100, Hardrock 100, Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc and Marathon des Sables.
Along the way, they ran into (and photographed) some of trail running’s best-known faces. “I met some incredible characters,” says Alexis. “Scott Jurek, found one night under a deluge of rain in the middle of the Appalachian Trail. Kilian Jornet in the mountains in Colorado. Anton Krupicka in Boulder. Jenn Shelton in front of a beer in Durango.”
The result is Grand Trail, a large, hardbound coffee-table book. It’s 324 glossy pages of sweeping landscape shots, gritty race photos and arresting action portraits, alongside short profiles of runners and events, written in both English and French. (The book can be ordered here.)
The following images are reprinted from Grand Trail with permission. They are before-and-after portraits of finishers of the Ultra-Trail Harricana du Canada 125K, a relatively new ultra in La Malbaie, Quebec. For many, says Alexis, it was their first time running 100 kilometers.
“I had the chance to photograph beautiful landscapes, the great champions,” he says. “For this Before/After project, it was important to also see anonymous, universal emotion. I was not trying to see just suffering or joy. I wanted the whole palette.”
– Paul Cuno-Booth
Betrand Baud Lavigne, 33
Caroline Cote, 29
Christian Bouchard, 43
Claude Parent, 56
Daniel Legresley, 50
David McCaw, 58
David Morin, 34
Frederic Jouin, 44
Helen Dumais, 34
Jonathan Noel, 26
Jonathan Tardif, 39
Mathieu Deguise, 32
Patrick Labelle, 24
Renee Hamel, 35
Richard Turgeon, 49
Simon Meloche, 31
Sophie Limoges, 36
Steve Lavoie, 41
Suzanne Lefrancois Couturier
Yanick Normandeau, 40