01 / 02

For Love of the Game

For the duration of the Football World Cup, Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins will be exhibiting his latest series For love of the Game at Third Floor Gallery, Cardiff Bay.

Steele-Perkins has observed how football has seduced people of all nationalities since working on a magazine assignment in Lebanon in 1996. There, after a long civil war, the game was part of the healing process by trying to unite the hostile Christian and Muslim factions into a single national team. "For years I didn't like football, but as a photographer I was drawn to the way football became a part of people's lives, their culture: how much it mattered to them and how much it got played - in refugee camps, in back streets, in muddy fields, in snooker-table stadiums, in deserts and gardens.”

For Love of the Game looks past the celebrity culture of the game focusing instead in the social phenomenon that is football, a sport that is played regularly by over 240 million people in over 200 countries. For such a global vision, Steele-Perkins has photographed the grassroots support and amateur football leagues in three very different countries: Japan, one of the most recent countries to get addicted to the game since qualifying in 1998; England, that gave birth to the modern rules of the game; and Ghana, where becoming a famous football star drives the dreams of thousands.

With over 35 years experience behind the camera, Chris Steele-Perkins is one of the most internationally acclaimed British documentary photographers. He is the author of ten photo books as well as the winner of various awards including the 1989 Robert Capa Gold Medal, the 2000 World Press Photo Award and the 2008 Terrence Donovan Award. Steele-Perkins has been a member of the Magnum Agency since 1979 and currently works extensively in Britain and Japan.