Stuart Roy Clarke

Stuart Roy Clarke (The Homes of Football)

Stuart Roy Clark

Manchester City supporters

Stuart Roy Clarke was born August 19, 1961 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. He attended Westfield Primary School Northchurch and then Berkhamsted Grammar School, made famous by the writer Graham Greene. On his mother's side the family were bakers, teachers...head seamstress in the local clothes factory. His father's family worked on the railways; his grandfather was the Mayor of the town up until the 2nd World War and during his time in office commissioned or opened many of the local sporting facilities. Clarke's father Roy helped organise and preside over youth football leagues throughout the region of West Hertfordshire. Clarke's interests as a boy were collecting and drawing things, alongside football. Berkhamsted School however offered a Latin and rugby-playing education so Clarke maintained his football interest playing on Sundays for Berkhamsted Dynamoes and supporting the local professional club Watford FC,"hiding behind the Music School on Saturdays until the cross-country team bus I should have been on had departed for Charterhouse or Harrow On The Hill"
Further education led Clarke through a year at Hertfordshire College of Art & Design at St Albans where his photography abilities and keen eye were seized upon by product designer cum lecturer Richard Seymour...accordingly Clarke proceeded to do a degree in Film & Photographic Arts at the Polytechnic of Central London. In the months that followed graduation in 1984, Clarke traveled widely and during this period, discovered The Lake District - a marriage of sorts that remains to this day. In 1990 whilst in Cumbria, Clarke saw an opportunity to bring together the things he was interested in : art, football and human/nature to become "a project to last me at least 10 years and maybe a lifetime'" ...The Homes of Football was born.
Clarke married and separated in 2001-2002; in 2005 he fathered his first and only child, Ava Beatrice.

The Homes Of Football

Stuart Clarke photographed at football grounds throughout the UK in the early years of the 1990s both as an independent artist and as the only photographer to the Football Trust. In this way Clarke built up a unique and distinguished collection of film positives which he set about exhibiting and turning into published work. From 1991 to 2005 he had an unbroken spell of touring The Homes of Football to 89 municipal museums and art galleries - believed to be a record. In 1995 he set about establishing a permanent Museum of British Football, in Carlisle, to consolidate his and other collections - but the scheme came to nothing. Clarke set up shop/gallery/hq instead in nearby Ambleside, in the heart of The Lake District. This was finally closed in January 2011 in preparation for it becoming part of a new National Football Museum in central Manchester. This closing coincided with the release of a hardback anthology of his first 21 years of Homes of Football entitled "The Cradle of The Game".

Sunderland "The entire Fulwell End" 1996
The entire end captured on film

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/gallery/2010/dec/05/cradle-of-the-game-review#/?picture=369376348&index=2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Roy_Clarke
http://www.mcfc.co.uk/news/club-news/2012/august/stuart-clarke-exhibition

The following pictures are taken by me at an Irbis Museum Manchester October 2012

Stuart Roy Clarke is interesting because he turns his back on the game and photographs the crowd. He documents their emosions, behavior and their passion for the game of football.