Meer, Hans Van Der - The Landscape of Lower League Football (New in plastic!)

At the beginning of the 1995 soccer season, Hans van der Meer set out to take photographs of the game that dodged the cliched traditions of modern sports photography. In an attempt to record the sport in its original form--a field, two goals and 22 players--he sought matches at the bottom end of the amateur leagues. He avoided tight telescopic details and the hyperbole of action photography, pulled back from the central subject of the pitch, and set the playing field and its unfolding action in the context of local elements. Over the last 10 years, Van der Meer has continued this project across the playing fields of Europe, traveling to every country with a significant history of the game. The Netherlands yielded 1998's Dutch Fields,and the odyssey that brings forth European Fields has since taken him from Bihariain, Romania to Bjàrkà, Sweden, from Torp, Norway to Als*àrs, Hungary, from Bartkowo, Poland to Beire, Portugal, and to urban and suburban Greece, Finland, England, France, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Holland, Slovakia, Denmark, Ireland, Wales, Belgium, Spain and Italy. Van der Meer's understated observations of the poetry and absurdity of human behavior on the field use soccer to consider--and provoke a laugh at--the human condition. Also available in a large-format hardcover edition.

Hans van der Meer (Leimuiden, April 4, 1955) is a Dutch photographer.

Van der Meer studied from 1973 to 1976 at the MTS for Photography in The Hague and from 1983 to 1986 at the Rijksakademie van visual arts in Amsterdam. During the latter period, Van der Meer captured street scenes in Budapest, of which the photo book Quirk of Fate was published in 1987. In the same year he received an award for this series in the 'Daily Life' category of the World Press Photo. Van der Meer is active as a columnist for NRC Handelsblad (Achterland, 2004) and de Volkskrant, and together with Hans Aarsman, Claudie de Cleen, Julian Germain and Erik Kessels he is the founder and compiler of the magazine Useful Photography.

Publisher: Steidl; 1st edition (24 April 2006)
Language: English
Softcover: 176 pages
ISBN-10: 3865212387
ISBN-13: 9783865212382
Item weight: 1010 g
Dimensions: 21.34 x 1.52 x 29.72 cm

New in plastic!