My Idea

The idea I've decided to develop is one that I've long thought about making a project around and it makes sense because it's about one of my biggest passions in life:- football. The idea is to explore what it is that people love about football. Why people spend so much time and money on it and why we get so emotionally invested in a team and even in individual players. I want to do this using a mixture of photographs, both documentary style and also portraits and incorporate texts using an introduction to it and to go with the portraits, shorts pieces written by the people in the picture on why they love it.

To try and get my idea across more easily, I wrote what I'd put and show to someone before letting them see any of the images. I suppose it works as both an introduction and a sort of project proposal and since my initial idea is to present the work as a book, it would go at the start.

"Trying to explain to someone who isn’t interested in football that it’s not just a game is like trying to communicate in a foreign tongue you don’t know; near impossible. For me, a love of football started at a young age. I suppose you could blame my Dad, he had been going since he was young and so I grew up watching football and seeing him go off to games. That said, it was actually me who asked to go to a game and not him suggesting it. In fact, he wanted to take me to our local club, Grimsby Town, but I was having none of it. He’s originally from Leicester, thus they are his team and I was insistent that I wanted to go to a Leicester game, not a Grimsby one. I think I was in love from the moment I set foot in the ground. It was against Chelsea and we lost, but I wanted to go back. It took just under twenty games before I even saw the team win but I was hooked despite the regular beatings the team received. That was almost thirteen years ago and I’ve not looked back since. Whether it was the atmosphere, seeing so many people in one place with a common interest and a shared love, the players who were treat like Gods or the game itself, I’ll never know, but I was hooked from the minute I laid eyes on Filbert Street.

The aim of this project is to look at what football means to the fans with a combination of text and imagery. Going to watch football and supporting a club is a lifestyle and often it’s in your blood as much as it is a choice to fall in love with a club. It’s something you find yourself doing crazy things for it. Getting up at 4am and spending over 6 hours on a train to get to an away game? This happens at least once a season, sometimes more depending where your club is based. The away days are usually some of the best days too! I’ve met some of my best friends through football and had some fantastic experiences. Feeling like you belong somewhere and fit in with a set of people who share the way you feel is something I wouldn’t swap for the world. A love of football runs deeper than you might think, some fans (me included) think nothing of spending two hours stood with no cover in the pouring rain to see their team, even if that means watching them lose the match in the last minute and an accompanied journey from hell on the way home afterwards.

So what keeps this love going and has you coming back for more? It’s the way you feel when you score a last minute goal or get an unexpected win that puts a smile on your face, one that lasts for the rest of the week. It’s even the way that one song or set of lyrics can remind you of a match and have you reliving those memories, good or bad. It’s about those Tuesday night games in December that you spend a lot of money on and shiver your way through, the people you meet and the sights you see. Words can’t convey it properly, but football is more than just a game, trust me.

Or maybe it’s the way that it hurts to lose a crucial game or get severely beaten by a local rival; although you’re angry and disappointed, you know you’re going to let the team break your heart again at some point and be ok with it. In fact, you’re going to be more than ok with it once the day has passed because you know they’ll make it up to you at some point and that high they take you to makes the pain and the losses fade away like the passing seasons."

I’m going to be asking fans from every league and of many clubs to tell me why they love football and their club and will show this in a book format along with portraits of some fans and also photos that sum up football. I’m going to be looking at stadiums that often range from being majestic pieces of architecture to the most basic of grounds in the middle of nowhere. I'll cover emotions, be it fans experiencing them, or players as well as the travelling, fans and the game itself.