From the camaraderie in the stands to the pre-match buzz on the streets, Arsenal fan Charn Singh’s evocative photographic work shines a light on the passion, community, and culture of his fellow Gooners.

For East Londoner Charn Singh, Arsenal is more than a football club he just supports; it’s a lifelong love affair rooted in legends like Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp, who first captured his heart. Over time, that devotion grew into a mission: to chronicle the essence of Gooner fan culture. Known online as @lowernorthbank, Charn’s stunning photographs capture the passion and fervour on the stadium concourse, the emotions and buzz in the stands, and the camaraderie in the streets around The Emirates stadium on match days. Though humbled by the recognition his work has received – including the honour of shooting for the club – Charn remains focused on highlighting the often overlooked passion of Arsenal fans. In his eyes, documenting football fan culture isn’t just an Arsenal story – it’s a universal football story.

I’m from Forest Gate, East London. On the door step of Green Street.

My profession is post production, with a hint of photography, mainly for my own Arsenal stuff, and sometimes for the club.

Why Arsenal: It may seem pretty silly, but it’s purely based on a goal scored by Ian Wright that I saw on TV in 1993, and decided to support the Arsenal from that point... It literally could have been a goal scored by the opposition, and it would have been that was supported. Of course, I’m glad it was Arsenal.

I genuinely cannot put into words what this club means to me, except that I literally plan all of my freelance post production work, and family events around Arsenal matches.

My idol is Dennis Bergkamp. I started supporting Arsenal because of Ian Wright, but fell in love with the club because of Bergkamp. His vision of the game was unmatched, the way he played was like nothing that I had seen before. I was fortunate enough to meet him a few weeks back at Arsenal’s club store – The Armoury.

Football never played a part in my family, up until I started to support Arsenal. I of course knew about West Ham, as I live a stones throw away from Green Street, but unsavoury incidents as a kid had me somewhat kept away from the game. 

Pre-covid, I never used to shoot at games. In fact it was super rare, but after we were allowed back into stadiums, I didn’t want to take anything for granted again. It was from that point I decided to start taking just one obligatory wide angle shot from my seat each game, and post that on Instagram. That soon started to snowball with interactions, and I eventually created a separate Arsenal Instagram account.

One thing I always thought that was lacking was fan culture on the concourse for every football team, so I started getting drawn to originally just taking pictures and videos on my phone on the concourse where my block is (9), and then I eventually purchased a point and shoot Fujifilm X100V to get better quality content. With being in post production, and being fortunate enough to have the club as one of my retouching clients, that was always more than enough for me.

There was never any aim or plan to eventually be given chances by the club to shoot for them across various briefs… It’s something that I still pinch myself over.

I find that shooting fans on the concourse really shows the raw side of football, which isn’t always shown. By shooting a lot of my content like this, a lot of the regulars I know have gone on to become really good friends, so that also makes it easier for me when shooting, as they know the images aren’t going to end up anywhere silly. I also appreciate massively that not everyone wants to be captured at the football, so I’m thoughtful towards that, as it can be a fine line at times.

I have a couple of bits coming up with the club, that I’m really looking forward to. One of which is shooting the Arsenal v Manchester United game at The Emirates (Decemeber 4th). 

The best place to keep up to date with anything that I shoot is always going to be on Instagram (nearly at 50k followers). I often try to keep my website lowernorthbank.com updated at least every 3/4 weeks. It’s a bit hard with some of these pointless international breaks coming so thick and fast. 

Keep up with Charn across social media via his @lowernorthbank accounts on Instagram, Threads, BlueSky and X.

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