The Game
Stuart Roy Clarke
“In his new book, The Game, acclaimed soccer photographer Stuart Roy Clarke and writer John Williams chronicle the fabric of the world's game over the past three decades in Great Britain. Through Clarke's lens, the players, the venues, the fans, the big cities and the villages come to life, and Williams's words allow the reader to get lost in the magical, sometimes mythical, world of British soccer.
British documentary photographer and social commentator Stuart Roy Clarke has been covering the game of soccer for more than thirty years, focusing his keen eye not just on the players but also the fans, stadiums, cities, and pubs; people and places that reveal the cultural and historical significance of soccer in the UK and beyond, telling intimate stories that we often miss as American fans following the top international clubs from a distance. In 2017-18, Clarke got together with John Williams, a sociologist at the University of Leicester who writes about soccer and its fans, to try to tell the story of the game they love. Their lively conversations, along with a feast of Clarke’s exhilarating photos, form The Game, a beautiful book that gets to the bottom and the top of what makes the beautiful game so enduring. First published in the UK in 2018 by Liverpool-based Bluecoat Press, Clarke and Williams have updated The Game with additional photos and conversation for a North American release of one-thousand copies by Relegation Books.
Stuart Roy Clarke
b.1961 in Hertfordshire in England, is a photographer, artist, exhibitor, film-maker who is best known for his 30-year-long opus Homes of Football. The body of work has spawned 10 hardback books and a record number of traveling exhibitions. He has a daughter Ava, 14, not yet ‘a photographer.’
John Williams is an Associate Professor in the sociology of sport at the University of Leicester in the UK. He is widely known for his work on sports culture, especially soccer fandom, and is a season card holder at Liverpool Football Club.
More praise for The Game
“The Game is not just a book you are buying, it is a legitimate work of art you are investing in. With a layout designed by Ben Clarke Hickman, the photographs from Clarke (as well as the older pictures he mixes in with them) provide a handheld gallery of the beauty of the game and its people.