Art and sports usually make for uneasy bedfellows, but as we know, there are always exceptions to the rule: in the case of football, it’s worth having a closer look at photographer Hans van der Meer’s beautiful studies of the European obsession with football. Somewhere between landscape photography and documentary reportage, van der Meer has been traveling across the provinces of his native Netherlands and her neighbours, taking a distant but precise look at local football culture. In framing and aesthetics reminiscent of the Düsseldorf school of photography, he succeeds in extracting a subtle and quiet beauty from a generally loud and rowdy mass obsession by going back to the very roots of football: with van der Meer, it’s simply man against man, far from the arenas of the current World Cup hype.
All photographs from ‘European Fields’ by Hans van der Meer, published by SteidlMack
