EXPLICIT CONTENT WARNING | This article discusses and shows work that documents real violence connected to illegal football-related fights. Lower Block does not condone violence and does not celebrate the actions depicted. The purpose of publishing this work is to examine documentary photography, authorship, and the social questions raised by the images. Readers are encouraged not to judge, but to ask a single question: why?
BOSFIGHTS / LIVE FREE is a documentary photography project that takes viewers deep into a hidden football subculture. Over a period of two years, Belgian photographer Sebastian Steveniers gained access to an underground network of rival hooligan groups who meet in forests to engage in organised “free fights,” far from public view. The confrontations are brief, intense, and extremely violent, yet governed by their own codes and rituals.
Steveniers’ work looks beyond the clash itself, focusing on what surrounds it: anticipation, loyalty, brotherhood, vulnerability, and the uneasy calm that follows the chaos. The project also raises difficult questions about masculinity, freedom, control, and the position of the photographer working from inside a closed and dangerous world.
Below, Steveniers explains the project in his own words, in full.
“In 2016, I gained access to an underground scene of illegal “free fights” between rival football hooligan groups. These fights take place deep in forests, far from public view. The rules are minimal: two groups fight for the colours of their club until one side can no longer continue. The confrontations are short, intense, and extremely violent – yet once the fight ends, the aggression dissolves. Hands are shaken, beers are shared, and everyone returns to everyday life.
“Gaining trust within this hermetically sealed community took months. Once accepted, I was allowed to photograph from within the group. My work focuses not only on the clashes themselves, but also on the moments before and after: anticipation, brotherhood, vulnerability, and the strange calm following the chaos.
In April 2018, I was arrested during the project. Authorities accused me of participating rather than documenting. I spent three weeks in jail, and all my hard drives were confiscated. For years, the project appeared lost. In 2024 – six years later – the material was returned after I was acquitted of most charges. The court explicitly acknowledged my role as a professional documentary photographer.
Revisiting the images raised difficult questions: why do these men risk everything for a fight lasting less than a minute? What do they gain – and what do they stand to lose? What about the position of a photographer in between those worlds? How far does engagement go? BOSFIGHTS / LIVE FREE explores violence, but also ritual, loyalty, masculinity, control, and the search for freedom within a highly regulated society.”
The title Bosfights translates directly to forest fights. The addition of LIVE FREE reframes the work. This is not only about violence. It is about identity, belonging, and the human impulse toward freedom, however contradictory or destructive its expression may be.
Lower Block publishes this work because documentary photography has value precisely where things are uncomfortable. These images are not an endorsement. They are evidence. They ask to be looked at carefully, without spectacle, and without moral shortcuts.
BOSFIGHTS / LIVE FREE is self-published by Steveniers as a large-format black-and-white photobook, printed on heavy woodfree offset paper with an open sewn spine and black edges. The first edition of 500 copies sold out in two days upon release in March 2025. A second edition followed in July 2025, with limited copies still available. The book has since been shortlisted for the Henri Cartier-Bresson Photobook Award and is available at a retail price of £45.
