Stuart Roy Clarke


Stuart Roy Clarke is an English documentary photographer. His major works include The Homes of Football and Scenes from a British Summer Country Pop Music Festival.

Life

Clarke was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, on 19 August 1961, the youngest of three children of Mary and Roy Percy Clarke, a quantity surveyor.

Career

After several years of working for local newspapers in Hertfordshire and as a freelance photographer for the magazine Time Out in London, Clarke went to live in The Lake District, where he began The Homes of Football in 1990.
The football opus, documenting the changing face of the game, was self-funded initially but then evolved into a touring exhibition hired by various municipalities and shown in 80 museums and art galleries over a 15-year period. In 1997 Clarke also opened a permanent gallery to his football work in the Lake District, at Ambleside, in the county of Cumbria.
In 2005, he started Cumbria Surrounded, which went on to win the Lakeland Illustrated Book Of The Year in 2010.

Exhibitions

The Homes of Football

The Homes of Football is composed of photographs taken entirely on medium format film, without cropping, using a Bronica camera and a standard lens.
Clarke began The Homes of Football in the wake of the Hillsborough Disaster and the resulting Taylor Report. The earliest photograph in the collection is of four boys at Kilbowie Park, home of Clydebank, in 1989—a club and ground that has since disappeared. During the 1990s, Clarke made thousands of trips to football matches, photographing the crowd and the grounds themselves. The focus was on the ordinary football supporter, rather than the more 'glamorous' side of the game. Clarke was also the only official photographer for The Football Trust from 1991 and its successor The Football Foundation until 2005. The collection has been supported by the Professional Footballers' Association.

Exhibitions (UK unless specified)

called the work "A unique and wonderful collection of football scenes. Stuart Roy Clarke puts a new perspective on the game."
Bryan Robson, the then manager of Middlesbrough, wrote in 1996 that “Stuart Clarke has brought to life the international game of football with a series of outstanding, innovative and often witty photographs.” Mike Foster, General Secretary of The FA Premier League added in 1998 “The exhibition really is paradise for any lover of football. The feelings I had were not dissimilar to walking into an empty stadium; soaking up the atmosphere and letting your imagination wander – you really do lose yourself in the surroundings”... and in 2010 on the release of an anthology of Clarke's Homes of Football work adds "I never tire of looking at the photographs. They are captivating and evocative of a football lovers’ halcyon days."
Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi&Saatchi, described the Ambleside gallery as "an amazing experience" in a 2009 article about Clarke's work.
Philip Köster, managing director of '11 FREUNDE - Magazin für Fußballkultur' wrote that "Clarke depicts football at its core, which eventually makes its indestructible: passion. Whatever he takes photos of he always searches automatically for the emotional centre of the picture. Clarke is a documentalist of change, an incorruptible contemporary witness with a camera.”

Books