Southern Lights - Night Landscapes Around Floodlit Football Grounds

Ian Hughes

As a child, I loved walking from my Grandad’s house to night football matches at Goodison Park, home of Everton FC. The floodlit stadium looked like a distant beacon drawing us in towards it, lighting the surrounding streets like a Hollywood film set. I still get excited now when I see distant floodlights – from Premier League stadiums to local village club grounds. Over the last 15 years I have been photographing the landscapes surrounding floodlit football club grounds at night. Instead of going inside to watch the games, I spend the 90 minutes trying to take a picture that captures the visual spectacle outside, before the referee blows the final whistle, the lights go off and the landscapes return to darkness and normality. I’ve photographed well over a hundred grounds - including all fifty floodlit grounds in Sussex. They’ve been featured in The Guardian and Austrian magazine Ballesterer. For this exhibition, I have selected fifteen photos taken around Sussex and the South East of England.

Artist biography

I studied Photography at Wirral Art College in the 1980’s where I was taught by Tom Wood and developed a lifelong love for Street Photography. I then worked as a cruise ship photographer in Miami for 8 years. The unsold pictures that I collected from each cruise went on to be published and exhibited around the world over 20 years later under the title ‘Love Boat Rejects’. In 2006 I gained a degree in Editorial Photography at The University of Brighton. I was a finalist in the International Street Photographer 2012 Award at the London Festival of Photography and selected as one of Lens Culture’s ‘Fifty Emerging Talents Worldwide for 2015'.

Website
Social