Miriam Strong’s personal project Hold For Impact offers a glimpse at pre-show rituals in the wrestling world – the tension, focus and anticipation ahead of the event.

Shot in Vancouver Canada, this series documents the raw, chaotic world of Vancouver’s underground pro wrestling scene. Where violence is performance, identity is fluid, and the ring becomes a stage for something far more personal than spectacle.

This is a project not only about performance but also about transformation. Wrestling is often seen as fixed, with binary identities of hero and villain. What Miriam discovered was something far more fluid. She learned how characters are born during their training and evolve throughout their careers. Wrestlers might start as a ‘heel’ (a villain) or a ‘face’ (a hero), though this identity can arc unexpectedly, shaped either by crowd reaction, personal emotion, or the collective narrative.