After more than six decades shaping the way we see the beautiful game, Peter Robinson—football’s most important living photographer—is finally getting the gallery spotlight he deserves. From lower-league pitches to the World Cup’s grandest stages, Robinson’s lens has captured not just the action, but the soul of football.

Now, OOF Gallery in north London is staging Double Vision, a comprehensive retrospective celebrating Robinson’s pioneering work. It’s the gallery’s first major photography exhibition since Martin Parr in 2022, and a vital reappraisal of a career that’s been deeply influential, if strangely under-recognised.

OOF Gallery itself is as unconventional as Robinson’s perspective. Based inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, it is the only contemporary art gallery in the world situated within a football ground—perfectly suited to honour a man who turned football into art.

Robinson, whose career began with the Football League Review in his hometown of Leicester, went on to become FIFA’s official photographer, covering an astonishing thirteen World Cups. Yet his genius lies not just in his access or longevity, but in his unique way of seeing. He watched the watchers. He turned his camera toward the odd, the emotional, and the overlooked: spectators, stewards, police officers, moments of quiet incongruity that often say more about the game than any goal ever could.

The show’s title, Double Vision, reflects this approach—football through a split lens of grandeur and grit, of theatre and truth. The exhibition features themed sections that draw out the narratives in Robinson’s work, such as the psychology of the penalty shootout, illustrated with images ranging from Diana Ross’s notorious miss to the exact moment Sir Bobby Robson realised England had been knocked out of Italia ’90.

There are iconic moments, too. Robinson was there when Maradona handled the ball into England’s net, when Liverpool’s 1996 FA Cup squad stepped out in now-infamous white Armani suits, when Tottenham legend Bill Nicholson held open the gates to White Hart Lane. But Robinson’s greatest gift may be his ability to find meaning beyond the obvious—to show football not as it’s broadcast, but as it’s felt.