Roger Mayne: ‘Football’
OOF Gallery – the world’s only contemporary art gallery in a football stadium at Tottenham Hotspur’s ground – is showing the first ever exhibition dedicated to the portrayal of football in photographer Roger Mayne’s work. One of Britain’s most acclaimed street photographers, Mayne’s inner-city scenes from ’50s and ’60s London document a seismic period of postwar social change in the UK, and football is at the heart of so many of his photographs, especially of the children he captured, playing jumpers for goalposts-style games in the street.
This show, featuring original prints of some of Mayne’s most notable and iconic photographs, shows football as a game (not a sport), with kids in shorts diving to save wild shots on hard concrete and dribbling down the middle of the road. It’s children living totally free – joy against the odds and the simple ecstasy of youth.