Before VAR. Before the Super League. Before state-backed multi-club ownership…
TOTAL FOOTBALL, Dutch Photography of the Beautiful Game: 1960-1989. A selection from over 30,000 football reportage photographs in the public domain, sourced from the Dutch Nationaal Archief, edited and sequenced by yours truly. I’ve printed a VERY limited number of copies on newsprint which are available via DM, $10 shipped, US only. The book is also available to view in full on my website, link in bio.
“It is an art to control chaos.”
-Rinus Michels
#football #soccer #oranje #cpfc
Hesitant about posting this thing, but here we are.
Earlier this year, I went on an 8-day guided tour through Iceland with my mom. While not my preferred method of travel, it made the most sense given the circumstances. I saw some incredible places. But I couldn’t get over what I know most of us encounter when visiting highly trafficked tourist areas like this; a mob of phone screens and their owners pushing, posing, filming, and generally not looking at the thing they purportedly came all this way to see.
I’m reminded of this writing by Susan Sontag, "A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs."
I'm not innocent. I couldn’t tell you if I remember the places I've been from the experiences I’ve had or if I'm merely supplanting memories with the photos I've taken. However, the absurdity I was seeing here was on another level, and for some reason I just started taking pictures of other people taking pictures in front of things. It started off mostly as a joke, but as the trip continued, I expanded into documenting the infrastructure set up to support this scale of tourism for which the Icelandic economy currently depends on.
Together these images form a sort of dark comedy on the state of travel today and show what can happen to a place that has, in large parts, been reduced to a product. This is where I landed. One box of prints. I thought it should only live as a single-edition object that you have to interact with physically, slowly, and intentionally. Not “content” and not for sale.
And yet, I'm sharing it here… contributing to the very thing it condemns. Still reconciling with that...
The Raisin at the End of the Hot Dog
Iceland, March 9-17, 2023
(54) 8x10 prints + (15) snapshots
Box handmade in London by Piotr Jarosz @i_make_books
*edit* This is no longer available to view online. As intended.
Thanks
Pleased to dust off this piece for display at @theimageflow Bay Area open exhibition.
Thank you to @haus_of_allie@lopesshana@nathanlomas.art and the Image Flow crew for the selection. The opening reception is September 27th from 5-7, on view until Jan 12.
31x32” from Realignment And Closure, 2021 - First image from original exhibition at @problemlibrary
