This pair has seen a lot of podiums. Jossi and dad, Bruce, cheesing for the camera on game night. Photo: Josh Bishop “I had a midlife crisis, I guess you could say, at 28 when I blew my shoulder,” Jossi says. “I was creeping up into my late 20s and realizing that the competitive chapter of my career was coming to a close. All of a sudden, I realized why all my friends walked away. But I was struggling to let go of it.” He’d been a competitive skier for 15 years at that point, but he still wasn’t ready for what he calls the “after skiing” part. “I want it to be my life,” he says. “I wasn’t willing to say, ‘Well, that was a heck of a [career], now I’ll go to uni and become a lawyer.’” Jossi tried to make a run of it after rehabbing his shoulder, issuing a public announcement in the summer of 2019 detailing a push for the 2022 Beijing Games, but by December, he quietly acknowledged it was over. “It’s hard to come back at a certain point. Each time you come back, those inruns get scarier and the landings hurt more,” he says. “So I was wrestling with this existential thing. I tried pushing down these thoughts and just getting back to the park. But after literally one session on the Stubai park course [that] October, I knew I was done.” “I wasn’t willing to say, ‘Well, that was a heck of a career, now I’ll go to uni and become a lawyer.’” —Jossi Wells SKIING IS an insular world, existing in a microcosm defined by individuals lionized at that intersectional point between persona and on-snow achievement. Tanner Hall is renowned for his polar-izing bluntness; JP Auclair for his emotive and playful personality; Seth Morrison for his punk rock brazenness. As Jossi speaks, you get the sense he is intentional and introspective. He has been crafting his own image for years, and is hyper-aware of his presentation on and off the hill. But as he’s grown older, his efforts have shifted away from controlling his image and toward sharing his vision. Jossi bought his first camera more than 15 years ago. Nate Abbott, a professional photographer and friend, encouraged the purchase after witnessing Jossi’s interest in the mechanics and his attention to detail. He started out shooting film, blowing through roll after roll of Ilford HP5 black-and-white film. In the years since, he’s continued to sharpen his eye and master the medium. These days, Wells relies on a stable of film cameras: a Mamiya 6, Leica M7 rangefinder and point-and-shoot Contax, among others. Jossi’s photographic eye, like his on-hill aesthetic, is refined. The images he creates have a warmth to them. Por-traits of his brothers and father. Landscapes and street scenes snapped after close observation. Snippets of the instances and in-betweens on snow and in the mountains, light, ethereal and otherworldly. They are inviting and playful, dripping with understated cool. For years, his passion remained a hobby, a travel companion in a life of infinite flux. But after reckoning with the end of his competition days in 2019, Jossi saw the need to take control of the next chapter in his career. Jossi Wells 063
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 1: Page 63
