Athletes is a photobook by Anderson & Low, the working partnership of Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low, who have collaborated as a photographic team since 1990. Twin Palms Publishers released the book in October 2002. It is a hardcover volume of 96 pages, measuring 10 by 12 inches, with 70 duotone plates. The publisher notes that their work has focused on aspects of sport and the lives of athletes.

The photographs were taken during the three years prior to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. According to the publisher, the images follow young athletes as they strive to achieve their Olympic dream. Taken as a whole, the publisher writes, they meld into a single reflection of athletics and sport—a dynamic portrait conveying the beauty, toil and determination of competitors.

This is not a record of events seen from the stands. The photography places its emphasis on the athletes themselves, on effort, and on the period leading up to the Sydney Games. Read as a sequence rather than a set of isolated pictures, the book treats sport and the lives of athletes as a serious photographic subject. Its duotone plates give the project a consistent visual register.

The reading experience is cumulative. The photographs can be considered in relation to training and preparation; together they build toward a portrait of ambition sustained over time. Because the book concentrates on the years before the Sydney Games, its interest lies less in victory than in the long, unglamorous work that precedes it. That sustained attention is what gives Athletes its coherence as a photobook.