The Homes of Football - The photographic art of Stuart Roy Clarke

Stuart Clarke / The Homes of Football

20 years ago I began The Homes of Football believing myself to have a mission in telling the changing face of football, post Hillsborough. I believed I was stood on the precipice of history, peculiarly privileged in my view, to witness a national institution in big trouble, reinventing itself.

I never deserted that lamp, but the mission dimmed as the years rolled on. Then, ding, bang on this 20th anniversary there is (rather than a token anniversary) again a real sense of mission to start telling the story anew. Club after club is facing dereliction, given the global recession combined with over-reaching oneself. Even though the game is ever more popular in footfall and some of the foot-ball is the best ever served. It’s just the sums that don’t add up.

Here’s to that national institution. Again.

Stuart Roy Clarke

The future

In 2011 The Homes of Football is to become a focal collection at the new National Football Museum in central Manchester, that it can be seen by more people and never be lost to the nation that inspired it.

What people are saying about Stuart's work

• “Every photograph tells its own story. And make no mistake, Clarke is a master story-teller with a poet’s eye and wit, a genuine feel for the old game and the ability to capture its moods.”

  Jeff Connor, North-West Evening-Mail 1991

• “When Stuart Clarke takes his camera to a football ground it’s to record something far more valuable than mere superstars. Through his lens they become bit-part players, often not even that, in the broader picture. Those legendary feet worth x-million pounds are but a fleeting sideshow compared with the riches he sees.”

  John Woodcock, Yorkshire Post 1992

• “Contrary to popular myth, in which grandiose aims are invariably rewarded with triumph, in real life, visionaries and dreamers generally end up as disappointed, bitter people. Clarke’s story is rather inspiring. Here is a man who has invented his own job and with it his own style of photography. An intense, nicely offbeat bloke, Clarke comes from that veritable footballing academy, Berkhamsted (only joking), where he went to Graham Greene’s old school, at which they played only rugby.”

  Jonathan Margolis, The Sunday Times, 1995.

• “Slightly out of sync with the family trade (er, quantity surveying actually) Clarke went to Central London poly to study photography and film. To achieve the supreme technical quality he requires of himself, he will use only the kind of slow colour transparency film that would cause most of us to get camera-shake taking pictures on the beach if a cloud obscured the sun; on a wet night in November, this often means he is taking pictures at shutter speeds of a quarter of a second and longer.”

  Jonathan Margolis, The Sunday Times, 1995.

• “Like Cartier-Bresson, Clarke restricts himself to using standard focal length lens that most approximates the human’s eye view… nothing distorted by fancy optics. History’s judgement may be that Clarke’s photography, in its vast, still only half-completed archive, should be considered a national treasure.”

  Jonathan Margolis, The Sunday Times, 1995.

• “I think of all these images, which are enough to make the most hard-hearted factualist drum up a line of poetry, when I survey the beauty and grime and glory captured in these photographs by Stuart Clarke. They represent the myriad charms of the contemporary game, from the industrial backdrop of old Huddersfield, to the vast modernism of the new Ibrox, from the quaint pot-and-kettle backroom of Doncaster, to the teeming fanfare of a Championship decider. There is rioting modernism in these pictures together with slower-rhythmed songs of old. But the home of football remains a constant : sight, sound, smell, colour.”

  Graham Spiers, Scotland On Sunday, 1996

• “Little can dampen Clarke’s faith in a game that he still regards as a force for good – fulfilling our need for fantasy and a sense of belonging in a society where opportunities for mass gatherings and displays of intense feeling are comparatively rare.”

  Chris Arnot, The Guardian, 1998

• “See it. Artists and photographers have captured the beat of the action, the sweep of the stadia, the whorl of football crowds in the past but only in separation or in pinpricks. Never before have these been brought so together, so consistently as Clarke’s. His eloquent lens tells, always compassionately, about an experience so regularly shared, so seldom vocalised by all of us who watch, play or simply live in the vicinity of football.”

  Jonathan Northcroft, Scotland on Sunday 1996

• “Stuart Clarke has brought to life the international game of football with a series of outstanding, innovative and often witty photographs...”

  Bryan Robson, then manager of Middlesbrough 1996

• “Lowry’s paintings have come to Tullie House Museum in Carlisle and so have Sebastio Salgado’s photographs and John Keane’s paintings from the Gulf War. Stuart Clarke’s 250 photographs have eclipsed them all.”

  Christian Dymond, The Independent 1994

• “Few people pop into the National gallery before a Saturday football fixture or reset their videos from Match of The Day so they can catch the Late Review. It seems that the worlds of art and football are mutually alien, divided along class lines, each mistrusting and resenting the other and each promoting knowledge and enjoyment of their interest to the exclusion of the casual supporter. It is a brave man who attempts to united these two cultures...”

  The Sunday Times 1995

• “These are like pictures from another world. In Blood Red Road End, Barnsley, the painted brick wall topped by shards of glass is like a Rothko; its companion piece Yellow Brick Road is as luminous as a Matisse from Morocco. The colour prints shine as if lit from within, and a burger stall outside Highbury looks as if it’s part of an avant-garde stage-set, lit by Caravaggio.”

  Phil Johnston, The Independent 1998

• “Anyone with a love of football will see their own feelings reflected in these glorious snapshots of time & mood.”

  Alan Green, BBC Radio 5 Live, 1996

• “A unique and wonderful collection of football scenes. Stuart Clarke puts a new perspective on the game.”

  John Motson, BBC TV Commentator 1996

• “If Nick Hornby gave the fan a voice in the Nineties, Clarke has given the fan a face.”

  The Times Magazine 1999

• “The Homes of Football is a real must for any football fan. It is an excellent collection of outstanding photographs which truly capture the passion of the game. There are shots from grounds up and down the country over a number of seasons - from the mightiest Premier Division stadiums to non-league minnows. Raw emotion is very much on display in this unique collection. They reveal the joy of promotion and the sadness of final games at old familiar grounds. It really is a gem.”

  Right Hon Tony Blair, The Prime Minister 1997

• “Clarke has clearly shown that the home of a supporter’s club is as essential to the entertainment value as the quality of a theatre is to its actors and audience.”

  Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive, Professional Footballers Association, 1991

• “A beautiful work.”

  John Peel, BBC broadcaster 1999

• “The photographs are fabulous - so vibrant and powerful.”

  National Portrait Gallery 1997

• “Arguably the best collection of football photography ever assembled in the UK.”

  BBC TV 2001