The Beautiful Game

Football has become a media circus, mostly focusing on negative aspects of not necces-sarily the game itself, but the players and their conduct or activities outside of football. The way that every decision is over analysed for hours on end after a game, the officials are scrutinised, and the players are pulled up for the slightest things, all detracts from the game itself. It has also, like almost everything now, been fully commercialized. Everything is for sale; kits, stadiums, boots.

I, like many others, have become rather bored of it, the great and true aspects of a beautiful game over shadowed by miniscule incidents and media hyperbole. I want to produce a photo publication that focuses on the true character, the real fans and the extreme passion that exists at every foot-ball club in the country. The game is beautifully simple, and I want to make a publication that reflects that.

Just to begin with are some very rough pages from my sketchbook, where I keep anything of inspiration such as photos, quick experiments and keep notes of ideas and new directions to investigate.

Some more quick sketchbooks pages; looking at ideas for a fold out large scale poster or print to come with the publication, which I am looking to screen print. Ideas such as printing onto existing newspaper articles and encorporating hand drawn written pieces are what I am currently looking at. The Green Soccer Journal to the right is a wonderful publication that initially inspired me with this project. It blends fashion with football but doesn’t in-dulge in any tabloid style gossip or ‘off the ball’ hyperbole. That direction gave me the original idea of a publication focusing on the culture and character behind football.

Stuart Roy Clarke is a photographer that I have been looking at and extremely inspired by for this project. He’s been all over the world photographing foot-ball at all levels, and his photos convey the pure passion and love for the game shown by fans from all walks of life. Will Robson Scott is another photographer that has inspired me to look at produc-ing a photo book, his raw, gritty, snap-shot style of photography draws the viewer in with each image.

Here is just a selection of the photo-graphs that I have already developed, the contact sheets on the left and some of my favourites so far are shown larger. I currently have two films waiting to be developed and another one in my cam-era at the moment. So far my photos are mostly architectural and structural, where as the ones that are waiting to be

developed focus much more on the fans and the character of football. Within the next week alone I have tickets for three football matches at different clubs, and I am in the process of acquiring behind the scenes access to a number of clubs too. I can envision already how I will be able to compile my photos into a well rounded selection.

As it takes quite a while to take, collect and edit all of my photographs, in the meantime I have been looking at some different printing styles (above), which I am looking to experiment with on the fold out piece, and also layouts for the internal pages. There isn’t a lot that you can do when producing a pure photo book, as I think it detracts from the im-

ages, but as all of the photos come to-gether the layout should come together with them. The layouts on the right are all relatively simple, but they are ones that place the photo at the centre of the page, with no complicated distractions. A uniform layout like these is prefer-able throughout the whole publication.

These are just a few rough workings of the direction I am looking to go with the front cover, a photo to set the style and mood for the rest of the publication, and some well crafted type. Obviously these are a work in progress and are open to change as the project goes on, and once I’ve got all the photos I can pick and choose the most appro-priate one for a cover. I am also contemplating a double layered cover, the outside being see-through, with the type on it, with the photo on the inside cover. These are things I need to experiment with over time.

I found the project slow to get off the ground, as a lot of things have had to come together at the right times and a lot of things still need to, but as it has progressed it has taken off and I am fully immersed in it now. I feel as if I haven’t got the greatest amount of ‘work’, because photos are waiting to be developed and it’s hard to work with thin air with regards to making layouts etc. However, going forward I have all plans in place to finish taking all my photos, then my focus will turn

much more to producing the physical publica-tion. Like I mentioned before, I feel I am in a good place and will have a well rounded cross section of photographs to make the publication interesting, varied, but also work as a set. From now on I am also going to spend much more time experimenting and working on the fold out print, as I feel that needs some work to get it ready.

The Beautiful Game