With the success of his photo “The Beautiful Game” (it beat 49,000 other entries to scoop the Street Photography category in this year’s Cewe World Photo Awards ) many people have assumed Mike Taylor is a devoted football fan. But as he tells us here, nothing could be further from the truth…
“Note to anyone thinking of trying this: If you have any love of football whatsoever, don’t bother.”
“I think football fans are genuinely disappointed to discover I’m just not one of them. It’s a bit like when the racist, homophobic geezers turn up to gig by the comedy legend that is Jeff Innocent.
I’ve had so much love for the pictures I shoot from true devotees of the beautiful game that I sometimes feel a wave of imposter syndrome. I should love football – I mean, what’s not to like about it.
Personally I blame the parents… I grew up in a working class household in South London with parents who loved each other to bits, but had both been through the post war family wringer. They decided early on that their kids were never going to have to cope with any of the madness they’d had to endure. So at home we just never did sport, religion or booze.
The lack of a drinks cabinet was partly to do with my dad’s job as a London cabbie which he could not afford to lose, and partly because too often he’d felt the end of his father’s belt after a few pints down the Landor Arms.
They once tried to get us interested in Sunday School, but even as kids we knew their hearts weren’t really in it and neither was ours. So that one didn’t last.
And when it came to sport – any sport – it wasn’t that I didn’t pick it, more that it just didn’t pick me. Before I was ten I had bottle end glasses for my really short sight and what I now know was severe astigmatism in both eyes. Someone actually once said to me”: “Christ, those lenses are so thick you must get yesterday’s light through them…”
At my very sporty sink comprehensive (it’s now a sports academy) no one in their right mind was going to pick me for anything that involved a ball because I could barely see. So sport just sort of passed me by.
Spool forward half a century and there is nothing I love more than grabbing a pint and sitting in front of a pub full of fans who are going absolutely apeshit over a match. A crowd like this is a total gift to any photographer. You get to sit close to the action, people are totally uninhibited and absolutely none of them give a tinkers toss that you’re there. I’ve often wondered why other photographers haven’t discovered and mined this rich seam of photographic joy – but I’m guessing it’s probably because they have an interest in the game.
NOTE TO ANYONE THINKING OF TRYING THIS: If you have any love of football whatsoever, don’t bother. To get anything decent you need a seat that doesn’t have a view of the screen and you need to really watch the fans and not the game. And the strike rate is very low. The space is difficult, the lighting usually terrible and the crowd unpredictable. If I walk away from a two hour session with two good shots I’ve had a really good day.
But while I might not feel the rapture, watching fans in pubs over the last decade has given me a long overdue education about the game, and just how much it means to so many people.
Shooting these pictures, I’ve developed a respect for the fans – despite what you might think, I’ve never once been questioned, intimidated or threatened because I was there with a camera to photograph them rather than watch the game. Even when kids have been sat front and centre.
The nearest thing I’ve encountered in any pub is a bit of very good natured piss-taking that anyone would actually want to spend time doing this rather than watching the match. All they’ve ever tried to do is evangelise about their team, share their passion and get me on board – until kick-off that is, and then I’m completely forgotten about and totally ignored.”
Mike Taylor is an experience documentary and humanist photographer. For prints, licensing, editorial commissions or to check out some of Mike’s other projects, visit Mike Taylor Photography.
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