United Pilgrims

These are from a series I've been working on since late last summer. I've called it ' United Pilgrims' Or perhaps just 'Pilgrims' verdict still out on that. I'd wanted to make some work about UNITED for a long time and as this is the centenary year of OLD TRAFFORD it seemed like a good time. OLD TRAFFORD is arguably one of the most famous football grounds in the world and the single biggest visitor attraction in the Northwest, attracting over 300, 000 visitors per year (on top of match days) from all over the globe. Making portraits of these 'Pilgrims' was the starting point.

I thought it would be a good way to look at the portrait and play around with it a bit. I knew that if I had approached these fans as a professional photographer they would have reacted very differently than they would when posing for their friends and family. I decided to 'nick' the snap. Getting in as close as I could to the person with the camera, and I tried to take as near the same picture as them. I got some funny looks and freaked out a fair few people, for this I'm sorry.

The pictures were all taken on a compact digital camera on auto setting, the camera of choice for most of the tourist's and have been printed at BOOTS THE CHEMISTS for an authentic 'snap shot' feel. I'll be uploading the full set (there's 52) in the next couple of weeks. I'm approaching a couple of people connected to Man U to do the forward and them I'll stick them in a book.............

All images copyright Mark Page.