The Game

British documentary photographer and social commentator Stuart Roy Clarke has been covering the game of soccer for more than thirty years, focusing his keen eye not just on the players but also the fans, stadiums, cities, and pubs; people and places that reveal the cultural and historical significance of soccer in the UK and beyond, telling intimate stories that we often miss as American fans following the top international clubs from a distance. In 2017-18, Clarke got together with John Williams, a sociologist at the University of Leicester who writes about soccer and its fans, to try to tell the story of the game they love. Their lively conversations, along with a feast of Clarke's exhilarating photos, form The Game, a beautiful book that gets to the bottom and the top of what makes the beautiful game so enduring. First published in the UK in 2018 by Liverpool-based Bluecoat Press, Clarke and Williams have updated The Game with additional photos and conversation for a North American release of one-thousand copies by Relegation Books.

Veteran soccer photographer Stuart Roy Clarke celebrates the triumphs of the English Premier League and the greater game of soccer in a feast of beautiful images and lively conversation.

Stuart Roy Clarke was born in 1961 in Hertfordshire, England, studied Film & Photographic Arts at The University of Westminster in London, graduating in 1984.

He spent most of that decade looking for his 'big serious subject' 'that I would be taken seriously as a documentary street photographer'. That subject turned out to be something that was right under his nose all along. Following three disasters befalling football, the British national game, in 1985 and 1989, Clarke began 'The Homes of Football' in 1990 and set himself 10 years to photograph and tell its story.

A never-ending exhibition tour began, which carried on well into the following decade, visiting 95 museums and galleries in the UK. At the same time, he opened a permanent home to the work in the English Lake District. In the third decade, two major showings of 'The Homes of Football'/'The Game' were held at the National Football Museum in Manchester, attracting 750,000 visitors.

The Game is Clarke's 12th hardback book (10th on football).