No amateur football, no professional football, no Champions League, no UEFA Euro 2020. For over a century, football has brought people together. In the spring of 2020 however, ‘the most important side issue in life’ came to a grinding halt.
European Fields by Hans van der Meer, a project including a book (Steidl, 2014) and a travelling exhibition, shows the primal form of the game: twenty-two players on a pitch, no matter their talent, no matter where. Passionately playing together, in a setting far away from the Champions League. His observations of life at the bottom of the football pyramid show not only how football is part of the landscape, but also how deeply the game and its rituals are rooted in human culture. With mild irony, Van der Meer demonstrates the mismatch between human ambition and the effective result, between an individual’s ‘inside’ perception and a more objective, distanced view of our behaviour. Amateur football as the perfect metaphor for life at large.
The European Fields exhibition contained a number of video observations as well as photographic football landscapes. These were shot across Europe: from Belgium to the UK, Portugal, France and Italy. As part of the cultural programme surrounding Euro 2000, the first one Vlaamse Velden (Flemish Fields), dates back to exactly 20 years ago. These short films, although included in the exhibitions have not been released until now.
In these days of social distancing, Paradox and partners, ranging from the world of football as well as the arts, chose to share these remastered short films with as wide an audience as possible. Published on a dedicated YouTube Channel, five ‘matches of the week’ accompanied by short introductory texts from writers and journalists from the originating countries were launched on consecutive weekends in May/June 2020. They can all be found online now and watched for free as an homage to ‘who we are’.
Vlaamse Velden, text: Jan Mulder, filmed in Flanders (BE)
Calciatori della domenica, text: Matteo Dore, filmed in Northern Italy
Saturday Afternoon, Sunday Morning, text: David Winner, filmed around Bradford (UK)
Campo de futebol, text: João Nuno Coelho, filmed in the neighbourhood of Porto (PT)
Foot Provençal, filmed in Southern France
European Fields Unlocked was produced by Laura Quarto, Kirstie Crail, Tiago Rosado, Bas Vroege (all Paradox) and Hans van der Meer in collaboration with Mufoco (IT), Impressions Gallery (UK), Imago Lisboa (PT). The original 2000-2006 films were remastered by Thomas Vroege.
Watch the films here: https://youtube.paradox.nl
Hans van der Meer (b. 1955) studied photography at MTS in The Hague, followed by a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He is probably best known for his series on amateur football, Dutch Fields (1998) and European Fields (2014, published by Steidl). In 2009, Camera Austria hosted a retrospective of his work. Through photography, film and writing Van der Meer examines the world around him. For example, his images of amateur football are also an exploration of human nature within the landscape. In The Netherlands – Off the shelf (Paradox, 2012) he wryly observes the increasingly homogenous built environment of provincial Dutch towns. With his latest project, Time to Change (Paradox, 2019) Van der Meer shows us the remarkable as well as problematic world of dairy farming.
Hans van der Meer is based in Amsterdam and teaches at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague.
About Paradox
European Fields Unlocked is a project in the framework of X25, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Paradox, producer of documentary projects in photography. Paradox is a non-profit organisation founded in 1993 by Bas Vroege, developing projects on contemporary issues with documentary authors: photographers, filmmakers, visual artists, writers and researchers. Founded with the aim of stimulating the development of documentary photography, Paradox has initiated around 80 productions that travelled to more than 250 venues worldwide.
