We sat down with Jess, a sports photographer whose journey spans small business ownership, freelance life, and cycling's biggest races. Discover how she uses photography to champion women in sport.
As a sports photographer working within the cycling industry, she has built a career documenting some of the sport's biggest moments while using her lens to elevate the stories of women in sport.
A Conversation with Jess Meniere
I have always been drawn to sport. I dreamt about cementing myself in a career in the outdoor world. But was never fast or strong enough, nor had the particular kind of talent to chase a single discipline to the top…
But, as it turns out, there are so many ways of belonging to the sports world, it just takes a little artistic refining. Because somehow I've found a way to make sport my work, with a lens in my hands instead of a race number on my back. So now, when people ask what I'm training for, I jokingly - but also truthfully - say: my job. To keep up on the trails. To lug a ±10kg pack of gear into the mountains. To race next to the peloton for a split-second shot.
The Race That Changed Everything
And, well, it all started with a raffle ticket I almost threw away.
Four years ago I won an entry to a gravel race, The Gallow, through Community Connect… And my first instinct was to decline. I was loaned a bike I didn't know, had legs that weren't trained, and a voice in my head that was certain I didn't belong anywhere near that start line. It would be my first gravel race and the longest ride I'd ever attempted. So, every reasonable part of me wanted to say no.
Instead, I said yes. I drove up alone, with no real idea what I was saddling up for. It was by far the hardest day I've had on a bike, physically monumental and mentally brutal. When I finally rolled over that line, the whole thing made sense. The people cheering. The conversations shared caked in mud. The strange, wonderful pride of having endured something together. Most of all, the power of being able to say: I did that, and I left nothing out there.
Crossing that finish line - wrecked, elated, covered in dust - opened a door to so much I didn’t ever think possible. That single yes changed the course of everything that followed. Not just in sport, but in my way of thinking about life - throwing caution to the wind and saying “absolutely,” “100%,” “f#*k it,” to the things that scare me most.
The voice that told me to decline my Gallows race entry, sadly, has never fully gone away - and to be honest, I don’t think it ever will. I still feel it at the start of most things: both the races I line-up at, and the ones I shoot. I’ve found myself at events where I’m standing with my cameras among athletes and photographers I’ve admired for years; and for a long time I understood that feeling as proof I had wandered off-track, and landed up somewhere I didn’t belong. I guess, now, I understand it differently - that I’m standing right at the edge of where I need to be - where anything worth doing begins. Teetering over the fear that leads you to something truly magical…
And what keeps me stepping over that edge, is the athletes themselves. I’ve had the immense privilege of watching some of the best in the world do the impossible from a few metres away, catching victories in frame as history is being made. I’ve had front-row seats to what it truly means to go full send, to completely empty oneself, and hold nothing back - and this has lodged something in me, an insistence to chase the same feeling in my own way. To want to leave every event knowing I poured everything of myself into it, that I did everything I could and crossed my own creative finish line hollowed out in the best possible way.
Pointing the Lens at Women in Sport
Sadly, there aren't many women in this industry, and the reasons for this are both immense and compounding. But with each year that passes, the more events I find myself at, the more women I see behind cameras.
Being one of few women in a sea of men working these events has made me pay attention to the other side of the camera too. I've stood at endurance events where the men's field moves through a wall of lenses - every key moment covered from three angles - and then the women come through minutes later to a scattering of half-attention. The absence of coverage compounds: no images means less coverage, which means less sponsorship, which closes doors that might otherwise have opened.
The storytelling of racing - and equal representation in it - is what tells the next young rider that this is possible. That a woman did this, on this course, and here is the proof. You can't aspire to what you've never been shown.
That's the work I care about most now. Not just being at the biggest races, but using the fact that I'm there to point my focus at what it too often skips. I want to make sure that when the strong field of women comes through, someone's actually looking, and telling that story.
Finding the Artist in the Race
Creatively, I've come to think that working sports events is a little like racing itself. The other photographers and creatives are both my inspiration and my competition - not in a way that pulls anyone down, but the way a strong field of athletes lifts everyone in it and pushes the limits of what's possible.
Over the last four years I've learnt an enormous amount from the talent in our sports photography scene - from friends who, in my eyes, out-shoot the best in the world with their frames, their edits, their final race albums.
Because, I believe the art they make has pushed me to find and refine the artist in myself.
