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Perspectives: is an essay series and interviews dedicated to bring sociological, political, economical and cultural thoughts on the game by experts, local actors, thinkers, and researchers. These essays are designed to start conversations, understand the new issues and give policy-oriented takeaways.

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Scott Groult

Against Nostalgia

Harlem Lamine

Friday, January 31, 2025

Bad Bunny has released its new album.
Trump is back in the White House.
And everyone says football is dead.

After celebrating the New Year, nostalgia is a feeling that can run through us. To welcome what's coming is also to bury what's gone. So, in this note inaugurating the year, I asked myself, why are we nostalgic?

DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOTos, which translates as I should have taken more photos, is the new album by Puerto Rican artist Benito Ocasio, better known by his pseudonym Bad Bunny. It depicts that feeling of time passing, of the transformation of the world we're witnessing, and which is overturning everything we've ever known. Are we helpless, or should we bemoan the changes that come one after the other, altering our habits, our relationships and our environment? Should we mourn and contemplate the remnants of our memories? How do we cope with the passage of time and regain a sense of momentum? Especially in football. Perhaps photography can help us to avoid falling into sad passions. We could also put the question in these terms: what do we do with our football memories, without idealizing the past? What is photography's responsibility? How do we use it? Why do we use it?

Photography is a way of looking at the world. Football has changed, and above all the way we watch it. Television, after
having immersed itself in every home, has become central to the way we watch a match, and has even accelerated the
sport's popularity. I recently read the book J.O. by Raymond Depardon, the French photographer. In the preface to the
book, he gave an interview in which he explained how the intrusion of TV has shifted the photographer's role at major
sporting events.

Journalist: Television has since made sport very present in the media. Can we say it has also changed our perception of sports photography ?

Raymond Depardon: When you’re up against television, the sports photographer must show something more personal. Back then, only information counted. We were witnesses. Today, you have to get past mere illustration by showing the solitude of the athletes, gymnasts or swimmers before a competition, for example. I think a sports photographer must also have a clear stance. Particularly as there are more and more of them and the digital technology facilitates their work to some extent, notably thanks to a greater autonomy of the images. While I was covering the Games, I couldn't see my photos. The negatives went straight to the agency.

Photography is above all a style, a unique vision, a way of seeing without claiming to be an omniscient eye. Taking a photo means both capturing a subject and providing information about where we've been. It's stating who we are and telling about what drives us. Photography is a language.

Matthew David Stith

When I look at a photo, I enter into a dialogue with the photographer, who tells me a little about himself through what he sees and captures. A photo is always a point of view situated in space and time. Depending on our personal interests and identities, made up of diﬀerent perspectives - gender, ethnic origin, religion or nationality - our eye will not capture the same things. It is by cultivating subjectivity that the photographer oﬀers a unique view of the world.

When we look at the number of photos per tournament from the first World Cup in 1930 to the last in 2022, we see that the number of photos per tournament has multiplied exponentially. From a hundred to hundreds of thousands, we are saturated with images. But as Depardon rightly said, the photographer's role is no longer to inform. At the time, humanity believed that the democratization and dissemination of information would naturally make our societies more enlightened, more intelligent, more virtuous, and, therefore, inevitably happier. The results are contrasted. Our societies are more confused, with alternative truths depending on where you stand and what you believe. Football is no exception. We need to put things back in order.

The increasing amount of “content” forces me to constantly ask myself:

How can I make sense of this information? What to look at? And why look at it?

And this is where photography can help and be a compass for us.
Taking a photo is never more than ultimately asking the following questions:
What’s in the frame? What's my subject? Who is it for?

And that's how an image emerges.
When it makes sense to a person or enters a memory.

Bad Bunny's DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOTos is an ode to his homeland, an ode to the passage of time, and an invitation to certainly take more photos. But more photos of those we love, and of what matters to us.

Giuseppe Romano

Photography is a slow art form, emerging as a means of rediscovering bygone eras, lost or forgotten faces and
impressions. The process of photographic film reminds us of this. After exposure to light, the film undergoes several
stages in a darkened room, requiring the utmost care and attention. The film is then revealed, to produce negatives that
can be digitized or printed. A photo goes from exposure to light to a revelation a few days, weeks or years later, which
brings back memories. Unlike content creation, where the photo is instantaneous, the relevance fleeting, the digestion
immediate, and where nothing is remembered. The diﬀerence is a ditch.

We need to get rid of the term “content creation” which dont aim to enter into a dialogue with anyone. And it's here that
I draw the line between photography, which is an artistic gesture, a proposition, a way of thinking about the world. And
“content”, which has but one objective: to elicit maximum engagement. Without necessarily pursuing a relationship
beyond the conversion into figures of what a comment, like or save might bring in.

That said, football photography is not the art of nostalgia. And more widely, football is never more alive than when we announce its death. When I hear “game's gone” or “football is dead” over and over again every time something new happens, I wonder whether it isn't the exact opposite of what's being proclaimed. Back in 1992, in all the news we could have read that football had lost its essence with the secession of the big clubs by the creation of the Premier League. Today, the whole world is watching what was supposed to be the end of the game, everyone worships it, and the neighbors are still trying to catch up.

Bad Bunny's album is not a bitter melody rehashing what has been and what will be no more. But it is a reminder to grasp and bear witness to what's around us, today, here and now, and to realize that it's all meant to change.

But the football fan is conservative. Nostalgia in football is a pandemic that is spreading among successive generations.
In childhood, we all dreamed in front of our idols. However, when adults look back on their childhood, they miss the chance to appreciate football in the making. Can we celebrate contemporary players without comparing them to our past idols? Can we create new icons without rehashing what's already been done? Can we reshape competitions to maintain the excitement and enthusiasm they generate?

To all these questions, one generation of nostalgic fans after another will brandish their icons. The oldest will tell you: Pelé was much better than Romário; the next generation: don't compare Romário and Ronaldinho; the next: Neymar is no match to Ronaldo Nazário; the next: Endrick doesn't have Neymar's talent. Those days are gone, you should have taken more photos.

In any case, the ball keeps rolling. The game is faster, more technical and more tactical than ever before. All the indicators point to this. And it has to be said, football's governing bodies are more innovative than the so-called creative corporations.

UEFA has implemented a new format for the Champions League.
FIFA will inaugurate the Club World Cup in June in the United States.

It's obviously too early to say whether it will be a success. But whatever we think. And I certainly wouldn't be the first advocate of these developments. It's innovative. It innovates without rehashing what's already been done.

Nostalgia is never more than an invitation to embrace the present. And by no means to mope about the past. It's about thinking, documenting, writing, photographing and creating our lived experience as our passion for football evolves.

It means asking ourselves what we still need to build here and now?
It means working to build our own archives.
It means helping to create our own spaces in which we can thrive.
It means consenting to tomorrow.

And football, with its constant adaptations to the times, invites us to do just that. From the immersion of television in living rooms to the creation of new competitions, football photography adapts, adjusts, settles into the interstices of the game and becomes the key player to understand the world through football, the changes of the everyday life, and cataloguing the memories to come. — HL

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