David Vintiner captures the drama of the World Memory Championships

Stand by for some CLASSIC misdirection in this intro. You’ll all know that 2012 was London’s big year in the spotlight as it hosted a competition like no other, a test of mental strength and stamina that separates the true champions from the also-rans. It also hosted the Olympics (haha, classic) but the real feats of endurance played out at the World Memory Championships. Contestants come from around the world pit their wits against fiendish challenges such as trying to memorise an entire deck of cards, trying to remember a set of names and faces (the current world record stands at 164) or trying to remember a number with as many as 2,200 digits, and luckily for us photographer David Vintiner was there to capture it all.

As David says, Recall: “reveals some of the methods these talented participants use to succeed, as well as the mental strain of this idiosyncratic event,” and he’s done a terrific job of documenting humans’ innate competitiveness manifested in a particularly peculiar way.