Grown up men

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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When I finally went to the Holy Land that is Anfield Road I picked up an old idea which had occured to me sometime in 2005 when watching First Vienna play and taking photographs. Quite often, you can isolate players in a photo from the rest of the team, the stadium, etc. and get a clear shot of just the player and the pitch. I took a liking to the idea; on one level I simply think it looks good, but there is something more to it, which I tried to express in these photos.

Grown up people attending football matches is something fundamentally intriguing to me, and it has been ever since I was forced to explain my fascination to my girlfriend. I had never really thought about football on a metaphorical level before, other than agreeing with Nick Hornby and other authors who tried to explain why people go and watch football or any other sport for that matter; I knew I liked watching it, I knew I enjoyed going to the stadium, I knew I loved reading about football and talking about football.

But once somebody asks you why you chose to go and watch highly paid people you don't even know personally play football, you are forced to give it more thought. Which I tried to do with these pictures.

The players are isolated, by colour and by their positioning in the image (not manipulated, except for one case). In some cases, they have even been isolated visually by having the ball removed or even the opponent. So here's what the images show you: grown up men. Not much beyond that.









The only image I altered beyond the concept above is the following one of Stevie Gerrard. At first it only seemed like a nice action-shot, but on closer examination I realised the position in which I had captured the Skipper. And I realised, why he has saved us on so many occasions time and time again. For he is the messiah.

Household messiah

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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Just a fun idea I had last summer. This is called Household Messiah. Let me know what you think.

White night or any other title you can think of

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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Here's a few photos of our flat. Nothing special, just my obsession with the idea that a brick wall seperates our private lives from something we call public space. I still like the idea of
a) documenting your own apartment as well as you possibly can (spend as much time as you can getting to know your private space, documenting your bathroom, toilet, living room, kitchen, kitchen sink, etc),
b) restraining yourself in your artistic output to whatever you find in your flat (or looking out of it), so no big trips to some place else to take photos, if pretty much everything you need is right there in front of you and
c) throwing all that private shit right out into the open, into the public space for everybody to see, whether they like it or not, whether they want to see it or not, because I'll be fucked if it's anybody else's choice whether they get to see my private life or not. Which means that I decide what they do NOT see, but also being able to force upon them what I think they SHOULD see.
So here we go.


Our bedroom with a lot of rubbish lying around everywhere. A nice look out of the window, so I am quite literally opening up to the outside world. It was freezing outside.


IKEA-Expedit-bookshelf complete with books, plus other items from the IKEA catalogue and my photograph / painting in our living room.


Light coming in through the window and the shadow cast by one of our living room lamps. This is the second of three pictures I took sitting and watching The Wire.


Another view of our living room, still sitting and watching the wire and handling the camera on the tripod. Shutter speed was 30 seconds, because - and some of you, the really clever or obsessed amongst you, might have noticed - all of these photographs were taken at night in complete darkness in the flat with the only light source being the orange-light street lamps shining in through the windows. It was almost pitch dark, but still, with a bit of invention you can make a night photograph look like one taken during the day. Very little photoshopping applied here, almost none to colours, saturation, etc. I'd say 95% camera work.
This beautifully ties in with my second - and admittedly rather tedious (for 2010) - obsession of creating images that are a bit disturbing to watch; either because they are specifically designed to bore you, or because the subject is not very pleasant.

Working on the railroad

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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In 2008 I took a trip to the czech town of Kolín, about one hour by train east of Prague. I took my cameras with me and this is the result. Life on and around the railroad between Prague and Kolín. In no particular order and hardly photoshopped. I tried to leave the photos as much in the original state as possible. This means grain, little or bad contrast, lighting, etc. Real outdoor hands-on conditions.