Golden Heroes: Zack Zublena, Emmanuel Kelly and a New Vision of Paralympic Beauty
For British audiences, London is where this story comes into focus. It is the city preparing to welcome Emmanuel Kelly’s golden portrait session, and the city where his brother Ahmed made his Paralympic debut in 2012. Golden Heroes brings those connections together through a collaboration between Zack Zublena, Emmanuel Kelly, Ahmed Kelly and Tyler Kolodny.
With singer Emmanuel Kelly as its global ambassador, Golden Heroes: The Ultimate Line Breakers combines fine art photography, music and Paralympic excellence. Its ambition is to broaden how disability, beauty and sensuality are represented in art, fashion and public life.
The project has a particular resonance in the UK, where the legacy of London 2012 continues to invite reflection on sporting achievement, visibility and everyday inclusion. ParalympicsGB’s account of London 2012 offers a sporting reference point for this conversation.
For French-American artist Zack Zublena, Golden Heroes develops a longstanding creative vision: photographing Paralympic athletes in gold and placing them on a pedestal, creating living statues whose presence expresses strength, sensuality, individuality and light.
From Classical Sculpture in London to Living Golden Portraits
Think of the Venus de Milo, or the surviving marble torsos of ancient gods and athletes. Arms or legs may have been lost over time, yet these sculptures retain an extraordinary capacity to express grace, beauty and power.
For visitors to London, the British Museum’s Parthenon gallery offers a setting in which to consider the expressive presence of classical sculpture, including works that survive in fragmentary form.
The comparison invites a contemporary reflection. If a sculptural body can be admired without every limb being present, the same openness of perception can extend to the living person before the camera.
Golden Heroes approaches beauty through charisma, vitality, expression and presence. These qualities can be felt in an athlete’s concentration, just as they can be heard in Emmanuel Kelly’s voice when he sings.
Gold gives that presence a monumental visual form. Each portrait is conceived as an encounter with a person whose identity, achievements and creative energy shape the artwork.
Beyond London 2012: Representation in Everyday Life
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 1.3 billion people—approximately 16% of the world’s population—experience significant disability.
Behind this figure are individual lives, ambitions, relationships and talents. Golden Heroes seeks to contribute to their visibility through photographs that give the body sophistication, sensuality and artistic authority.
British discussions of the Paralympic legacy have also examined the relationship between sporting visibility and everyday experience. The Guardian’s reporting on attitudes after London 2012 provides one perspective on that distinction.
Within this wider conversation, Golden Heroes contributes through visual representation. Some viewers may recognise bodies like their own in images created for galleries and fashion editorials. Others may encounter an invitation to reconsider familiar assumptions about beauty.
The project’s humanitarian purpose begins with the photographs and extends into the conversations they can make possible.
Emmanuel Kelly: Music, Creative Identity and Global Ambassadorship
Emmanuel Kelly first reached a wide audience through his appearance on The X Factor Australia in 2011. His performance of “Imagine” introduced the voice and emotional presence that have shaped his musical journey.
He has since performed with Coldplay and continued to develop his identity as a singer and creative entrepreneur. His ability to connect with an audience makes music an essential part of the Golden Heroes story.
As the project’s global ambassador, Emmanuel is also an active co-creator. Alongside Tyler Kolodny, he contributes to its vision and development, connecting the photographic work with opportunities in music, fashion and cultural conversation.
His golden portrait is being conceived around the full range of his personality: charisma, humour, confidence, sensuality and sophistication. The creative process gives Emmanuel a central role in defining how he is represented.
Ahmed Kelly: From a London Debut towards Los Angeles 2028
Ahmed Kelly’s connection with Britain is rooted in his sporting career. The Australian swimmer made his Paralympic debut at London 2012, beginning a Games journey that has since included silver medals at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.
He is now working towards a fifth Paralympic Games appearance in Los Angeles in 2028. His planned golden portrait will emerge from his individual experience, sporting discipline and relationship with movement.
Emmanuel’s presence on stage and Ahmed’s performance in the pool offer two distinct expressions of concentration, physical awareness and commitment. Their relationship gives the project an intimate human dimension, while their individual identities give each portrait its own direction.
Ahmed’s photographic portrayal will explore the architecture of an athlete’s body: the strength contained within a posture, the precision of a gesture and the intensity that remains when movement comes to rest.
Zack Zublena: A Decade of Photographing the Human Form in Gold
Los Angeles has been Zack Zublena’s home for eighteen years. It is also where he began photographing people in gold in 2016, developing his signature visual language through encounters with dancers, yogis, artists and athletes.
Gold becomes a skin of light. Its reflective surface changes how the body receives illumination, revealing unexpected lines and giving each figure a sculptural presence. A small movement can transform an entire composition.
For British readers exploring photography as an artistic medium, the V&A’s Photography Centre in South Kensington offers a valuable cultural point of reference.
Within Zack Zublena’s practice, the image develops through an encounter with a real person. Gold transforms the perception of volume while preserving the gestures and expressions that make each subject unmistakably individual.
In sport, gold can recognise an achievement. In Golden Heroes, it also becomes a way to honour human presence.
London: Preparing Emmanuel Kelly’s Golden Portrait
A photographic session with Emmanuel Kelly is being prepared in London, with 24-karat gold leaf at the centre of the visual concept.
The session is conceived to produce intimate, elegant figurative fine art photographs with the presence of contemporary artworks and the sophistication of a major fashion editorial. Lighting, expression and composition will allow Emmanuel’s charisma and sensuality to shape the images.
Trust and collaboration are central to the process. Emmanuel’s participation in the creative decisions ensures that the portrait develops through a shared understanding of his artistic identity and the image he wishes to convey.
The editorial strategy includes presenting the resulting work to publications such as GQ and Esquire for consideration. Selected behind-the-scenes material is also planned to offer audiences a closer understanding of the creative process.
For British editors, the story brings together several connected subjects: a singer’s creative identity, two brothers’ different forms of performance, an artist’s photographic process and the representation of disability in visual culture.
Golden Heroes: The Ambition to Build a Movement
The project’s ambition extends beyond a photographic collection. Golden Heroes is being developed as a movement that audiences can engage with, share and bring into their own communities.
Movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and body positivity provide distinct examples of the ambition to bring important conversations into public life. Each has its own history and purpose. Golden Heroes has its own aspiration: to encourage a widespread reconsideration of how disability, beauty and desirability are represented.
Photography is the starting point. The portraits bring these subjects into a single visual encounter, while Emmanuel’s role as global ambassador connects the work with audiences beyond the art world.
The WeThe15 campaign, launched in 2021 by a coalition including the International Paralympic Committee and the International Disability Alliance, is an important reference. Its name reflects the estimate of 15% used at launch, while the WHO estimate cited here is approximately 16%.
Its focus on disability visibility, accessibility and inclusion offers common ground for the conversations Golden Heroes seeks to contribute to. The project’s development will be shaped by the voices and perspectives of the people participating in it.
Portraiture, Identity and Who Britain Sees
The portraits are conceived to accommodate the full range of human expression: powerful, seductive, vulnerable, joyful, contemplative or commanding. Each participant brings an individual identity that extends beyond any single label.
London’s National Portrait Gallery collection provides a rich reference for considering how portraiture gives visible form to identity and public presence.
Golden Heroes brings these questions into contemporary fashion and visual culture. Who receives the attention of a major editorial portrait? Whose body appears in a fashion campaign? Who is represented with the scale and authority of a gallery artwork?
Through gold, composition and light, these photographs celebrate beauty as something expressed through the person’s presence, extending beyond a single physical ideal.
From London to the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games
The approach of the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games gives this independent artistic project a meaningful horizon. It also brings the vision back to the city where Zack Zublena’s golden photography began.
The development plan includes extending the portraits to other Paralympic athletes from around the world, beginning in 2027. Each session will contribute a new story and a different relationship with movement, gold and expression.
For the period of the Los Angeles Games, the exhibition vision includes a gallery presentation open to international visitors, accompanied by a citywide billboard campaign. These plans aim to bring the photographs into dedicated art spaces and everyday public life.
Following the Games, the project’s ambition is a two-year international tour through museums, galleries and public spaces. Venues and partnerships will be developed as the collection progresses, allowing its message to travel across cultures and communities.
For UK audiences, the project connects a planned London creative encounter with a wider international story. London also holds a personal significance as the city where Ahmed’s Paralympic journey began.
Art, Architecture and Everyday Encounters across the UK
From London to Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh, the setting in which a photograph is displayed can shape how it is experienced. A large portrait in a spacious hotel lobby creates a different encounter from a work viewed closely in a gallery or a quiet wellness space.
Within a Georgian interior in Edinburgh, a converted industrial space in Manchester or a contemporary London gallery, scale, lighting and viewing distance can influence the presence of an image. These examples suggest possible approaches to presentation; Golden Heroes exhibition venues remain to be developed.
The project also connects with the broader British conversation about art and its public role. Readers can explore the Financial Times’ arts coverage for a wider view of artistic practice, exhibitions and cultural debate.
Zack Zublena’s existing work already explores the relationship between photographs and spaces people use regularly. A particularly relevant UK connection appears in the story of Zack Zublena’s artwork in David Lloyd clubs.
Golden Heroes develops this relationship between art and public life on a wider scale, creating opportunities for audiences to encounter the portraits beyond a screen.
Fashion, Sensuality and Creative Collaborations
Further creative directions include fashion collaborations and an underwear campaign celebrating the sensuality of different bodies. These opportunities would extend the portraits into settings where ideas of beauty and desirability are shaped every day.
Photography remains the artistic foundation. Each collaboration will be developed to preserve the identity of the participants and the strength of the images while creating new opportunities for the work to meet an audience.
An Invitation to British Editors, Curators and Creative Partners
Golden Heroes brings together Emmanuel Kelly, Ahmed Kelly, Tyler Kolodny and Zack Zublena around a shared creative ambition. Its next chapters will also be shaped by the people and organisations that connect with its purpose.
The project welcomes conversations with UK editors, curators, galleries, cultural institutions, fashion brands, athletes and partners interested in contributing to its development.
At its heart is an invitation to recognise in a living person the same extraordinary presence that can inspire admiration before a great sculpture.
True beauty is free, sovereign and infinite. Golden Heroes gives that conviction a visible form, with the ambition to carry it into the world.
Written by Zack Zublena
