When I first saw most of these, I thought ‘wow, they’re shit’. With poor lighting, awkward poses, embarrassing faux enthusiasm, or faux seriousness. But as I look a bit more, I quite like the informal aesthetic – they lool like young men caught outside a club to have their photo taken for the nightclub website. The flash is intrusive, their skin is blemished, their poses are the result of doing what they think they should. The bold background colours work well, allowing the strips to standout without distraction. The others without the bold colour, and the black and white ones particularly, don’t work as well. I guess the shoot was done pretty quickly, and therefore they are quite unguarded, and look like non-models, natural, goofy, uncomfortable – which makes a change from advertising photos, and footballers own informal instagram images. They are taken by a number of different photographers for Getty Images. Anyway, they still all tend to end up in one of a few categories, which I am defining as:
ODD/AWKWARD
CLENCHED FISTS/ROAR
KEEPERS
GOOD
BALLS
MOODY
There are others (Finger Point, Badge grab/kiss, distant look, tattoo point etc) and obviously some overlap between categories, but you can have a look yourself – https://www.fifa.com/photos/galleries/index.html.
ODD/AWKWARD
CLENCHED FISTS/ROAR
KEEPERS
GOOD
BALLS
MOODY
