Sebastian Buzzalino on photo series I Am Emotionally Attached to These Men
By Ansharah Shakil, March 26 2025—
Hockey’s immense popularity in Canada, and especially in Alberta, lies in a sense of national identity and pride for its history, popularity and existence as a Canada-associated sport. But it’s also an acknowledged fact that hockey, like many other sports, tends to be narrow in its field of representation. In his new photo series I Am Emotionally Attached to These Men, which opened Mar. 14 and will run till Apr. 15, Calgary photographer Sebastian Buzzalino delves into these issues, challenging the typical, narrow expectations of mainstream hockey players and audiences.
“Hockey more so than perhaps any other sport tends to be white, middle-class [and] North American […] and there’s limited people of colour, there’s only one out gay player right now,” Buzzalino said. “Then I’d seen some [memes about] commentators on hockey saying things that can be decontextualized and made homoerotic as a joke. So I decided to work in that environment.”
Buzzalino first got into photography at an arts and culture magazine which used to exist in the city. He worked as a writer, then an editor and finally as a photographer in order to receive both a review pass and photo pass, so he could take his then-partner and now wife to events alongside him.
“Exploring how masculine identities work in heteronormative spaces is something that is kind of a common thread in my work,” he said.
The photos within the series itself he says have a vintage-like, fun aesthetic that play on the satirical vibes of the project. Portraits are captioned with NHL broadcast quotes to look like hockey cards.
“The idea for taking these portraits at a hockey rink and making them kind of like a little slutty and a little fetish-y, that one came fast,” he said. “The idea of the hockey cards […] really stuck with me because it harkened back to a nice nostalgia. That feeling of just pure joy, of just having like a hero or an idol, something to look up to.”
The kind of passion audiences can have for hockey is clearly present in the photo series. Buzzalino’s portraits are bold, frank and charming, while the tongue-in-cheek captions add a level of light-hearted hilarity. Equally apparent is the complicated relationship sports, and hockey in particular, has with sexuality and masculinity, the ironic aspects of the intimacy woven into its rituals alongside the intimacy that is not allowed to exist. The portraits are in conversation with those topics.
“Anyone who watches sports knows that they take great pleasure in watching those sports and a lot of that pleasure isn’t necessarily on whether or not your team wins or loses — of course that’s a big part of it — but also watching bodies move, watching bodies be really really good at what they do,” Buzzalino said.
Buzzalino hopes viewers of the portraits who haven’t considered it before can acknowledge the major strides the NHL still has left to address its heteronormative culture.
“I hope that people at the very least enjoy the photography and the quotes, but more so I hope that they take away avenues of potentials of considering masculine identity outside of the rigid patriarchal heteronormative structure that otherwise operates,” he said.
Much of Buzzalino’s background in photography stems from his time at UofC, where he did a Masters in Communications about excessive bodies and identities and the intersection of existentialism and feminism. He advises current UofC students that there are always ways to apply what you learn in class to photography, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first.
What he loves about photography is that it allows him to enter a world he would otherwise not have access to.
“Photography is a big lie, and I love the idea that photography is a liar. We all think that photos are just a capture of reality, representation of reality, and what was in front of the lens is faithfully represented in the photograph, but that’s 100% not true,” Buzzalino said. “Photography has this incredible power of generating narratives and generating ways of understanding that then later intersect with things like identity and memory and collective consciousness, that I think is underexplored in our society because we are so used to just scrolling past photos.”
I Am Emotionally Attached to These Men is currently open at Roadrunner Vintage. More information can be found here.