Old Trafford

Old Trafford Football Ground, Mancunia

Notes from the Real World

I’ve spent a lot of time around Old Trafford Football Ground, since I decided to capture something of the match night (and day) atmosphere around the ground, which I’m guessing was in 2003.

I was also aware that both the city of Manchester and the area around Old Trafford (as well as the football ground), were about to change forever, and – socially and aesthetically – not necessarily for the better.

But ugly, functional buildings are fine if you don’t have to look at them.

For sure, they can provide superb photographic vantage points, and I’ve talked my way onto a lot of ugly rooftops, which – as I have vertigo – reveals something of an obsessive nature.

If you go through official channels to get up into the Gods, you’re almost certain to hit the tick-box jobsworth, whose salaried survival is dedicated to not letting you get there (in the most tortuous manner possible).

The Jobsworth may have been attracted to this bottom-rung power because (s)he’ll get it nowhere else, and they often have the look of those too scared to fart in case they shit ’emselves.

The British working man, on the other hand, can be blessedly more pragmatic. Once, near the Lowry Centre, I asked a site foreman, from the North East, if I could get up onto the roof for sunset?

No problem. He told me when to come back and took me up.

‘Right. I’m off, so you’re on your own. When I lock the gates, I’ll leave enough room for you to squeeze out. If you fall and break your neck, you’ll be alone ’til morning and I know f*ck-all about you being here!’

Fair do’s.

The problem was, he didn’t leave me enough room to squeeze out – he either forgot or more probably was having a laugh – and I had to clamber clumsily over security fencing, with tripod and camera bag, in full view of Lowry theatre-goers whilst grumbling about that ‘f****** Geordie b*****d’.

It wasn’t the world-beating sunset shot I’d hoped for, but hey – at least I was given    the opportunity, and for my part I accepted responsibility for my actions.

For every Old Trafford picture here, I probably have a hundred variations, which I’ve stashed away for posterity.

From a fans perspective, the fact that many of the angles and vistas in these images have now disappeared forever is quite depressing, especially the hotel slap-bang in front of the East Stand facade, which obstructs the view from most angles (couldn’t haver happened to a nicer board).
But from this photographers point of view, these irreversible changes have made my Old Trafford images totally unique: so thanks, Gary.

Old Trafford Red Sea

The East Stand (or Scoreboard End) of Old Trafford on match day.

I’d worked out the vantage point for this image when they were building some flats in the noughties, and fair play to the Chelsea-fan foreman who let me up there to do as I wished.

T’was another case of: ‘If ya fawl an’ brike ya neck, I know narfink,’ which is always fresh air compared to a health and safety clearance form, particularly when you live to tell the tale (if you don’t, log it as experience for your next life as a roofer).

What has been lost with easy digital photography, is that great pictures – like good graphic design, a Banksy stencil, quality writing or meaningful art – are born of ideas, and even reflex photos have a learning process that encourages thought.

The idea that drove me towards this image was to get all the red shirts running down Sir Matt Busby Way like a Red River: But that title ended up on another image as Red Sea came in for this one.
I began shooting at an England match in August and returned for every match, until the creative process delivered the necessary elements in the first week of November.
Its a great feeling when you capture something unique, especially when you’ve worked hard to put skin to the bare bones of an idea (a feeling lost to those who only know how to plunder the original ideas of others to sell on (sh)*tsy).

I sold prints of my work in the now redundant Royal Exchange Theatre Craft Shop for around twenty years and on seeing this picture, an Arsenal supporter – and Sky Sports cameraman – stopped in his tracks and said : ‘That’s the best football ground image I’ve ever seen.’

I’ve had similar comments from Everton and Liverpool supporters, which says a lot.

Look closely at Red Sea and you’ll notice specks of stillness in amongst the sea of red shirts.
These are fanzine sellers, and it was a sad day when Red Issue – one of the sharpest and wittiest of all football fanzines – pulled the plug on its print edition.

I’m not a football fanatic of any shade, which helps when working behind a pen or lens, because my impulse is to do justice to everything and everybody.

On match days I’d buy both UWS and Red Issue, and read them whilst I waited for my red shirted raw materials to come back to the free world, in view of the non-corporate side of the street.
At its best, Red Issue read like a non-public school version of Private Eye, fuelled by a Friday night whizz-bomb and seven cans of Breaker, and I’ve kept a pristine copy of the last issue for posterity, which I keep meaning to put in a frame.

When I knew I’d nailed this picture, and also Red White & Black, I punched the air like Rafa Nadal.
Then I realised it was pitch dark, I had no torch, no head for heights and had to fumble back down five or six flights of skeleton-build and scaffolding.

But when you get a pitch-perfect moment in time, it makes the dizzying sickness and much unpaid schlepping with a dead-weight on your back, more than worthwhile.   

Selfies burn out faster than a firefly, time will prove Tracy Enima’s work to be as worthless as pointlessness can be, but good ideas realised can (and should) live forever.

Red White and Black happened within perhaps 20 minutes.

Both shot on Fuji Velvia slide film.

ROONEY TUESDAY

I shot this on Wayne Rooney’s hat-trick debut against Fenerbahce.   

Although not a great picture, there’s usually something on offer and here, the sky looked like it had dressed in Everton-blue and turned up for a send off.   

The image was taken from the platform facing the East Stand, from where the police videoed fans in case of crowd violence.

I asked the Sergeant stood on top, if I could join him to shoot pictures?

He waved me up.

A lifelong United fan, shards of humanity shone through his mask of cynicism and I liked him for it.

I think he was glad of an interlude and we chatted about photography, journalism and the never-ending conflict between an individual’s right to interpret the world at large ‘without fear or favour’, and those who would ring-fence everything for profit, irrespective of the consequences to everyone else.

Take photography as an example and the Premiershit Agreement, more recently updated to the Dataco photographer’s licence.

Last time I paid attention, photographer’s were eligible to apply for their licence if they can prove they’ve sold X number of pictures (15? – to print media only) in the previous months, though this begs the question ‘how does Snapper Yosarian get into the ground to shoot them in the first place?’

One of myriad examples of the tyranny of ownershit, which in football reeks of L Ron Hubbard’s cynical dictum, that to make real money you need your own religion.

This method works best if you start without a God (not a real one, at least).    Silencing dissenting voices is a good idea, too – might as well turn photographers into PR puppets while we’re at it, by requiring they sign away rights to their own skilled work.

‘Have this lot not tried to stop you yet?’ asked the Sergeant, nodding toward the ground, ‘because if they can, they will.’

I understood the strain of base humanity, but they hadn’t yet devised a way to extend control to the relative freedom of the street (no doubt they’re working to get it done and cash in before Armageddon).

Weeks earlier I’d taken some of my prints to Angelo’s shop up the road, where I knew he sold independent artwork of OT.

‘These are good. Why don’t you show them to the club?’

To this day I don’t know if he was being sincere, or trying to stitch up a free-spirited independent competitor by directing him towards Pravda Central.

Nor am I sure if I rang up to make an appointment, or I just marched down the road there-and-then (which is more my style).

But I ended up standing in a small office block, then situated on the left as you turn in towards the South Stand tunnel, awaiting someone from ‘marketing’, or some other Circumlocution Office.

People kept passing me on their way in and out – well suited, posh booted and lycra’d up after a lunchtime run – and in the 15 minutes or so I was left standing there, I didn’t hear one Manchester accent.

Who were these colonisers?

What did they have to do with either the city or sport? (and I’m talking active Sport, not Sports Marketing or some Football Business degree, which are mere flowers of the root sickness).

How would they know a quality piece of work, if they’d never known the spark of inspiration or the birth-pains of the creative process?

And what possible common ground could we have, that didn’t require me to sell-out for a few scraps from the owner’s table and be sullied into servility?

Naive optimism broke out like nappy rash – maybe I’d get to meet one of those who admitted to the Red Issue crew that reading the fanzine was their ‘antidote to working here’?

Mother Experience thundered in to slap Sudocrem on my outbreak of Artistic Optimism.

‘Are you serious? You don’t belong here. Get the fek out before you start self-censoring!’

We’ve all had Self-Censorship Disease to some degree, and there sure as hell ain’t no herd immunity.

It multiplies from the top-down like an unreported pandemic, and infects the heart, soul and ethics of everyone it touches, but I’ll leave a worthy definition to another.

For every crusader there will be many more walking on eggs for fear of losing their job. And it’s not surprising that some have begun to see trouble everywhere, second guessing the wishes of top executives in ways more creative and paranoid than the executives may even dare to imagine… This is the truly insidious nature of self-censorship: it does the gag work more efficiently than an army of bullying and meddling media moguls could ever hope to accomplish.
Naomi Klein

If only those in the upper rooms could find a cost-effective way to get us all self-censoring—one that didn’t even require us to first be on the payroll—like an algorithm or AI, for example, then we’d all be in serious shit.

But that’ll never happen, right?