Draft:Christopher Peter Robinson

Introduction

Christopher Peter Robinson (Born 1944), known as Peter Robinson, is a British photographer renowned for his football images. With unprecedented access to some of the games’ most legendary figures and events, he was able to capture some of the most public and private moments with his unconventional reportage style.

Robinson served as FIFA’s official photographer for over two decades and, in 2015, was appointed as the photography consultant to the newly created FIFA Museum in Zurich. In April 2022, an article in The New York Times / The Athletic described him as “arguably the world’s greatest living soccer photographer.”

Early Life and Education

Peter Robinson was born in February 1944, the son of a policeman and a mother who was an Olympic swimmer. He pursued his education at Leicester College of Art and the Royal College of Art, where he developed a passion for photography.

Career

Robinson began his professional photography career in 1965. His work gained prominence through contributions tohttps://www.theleaguepaper.com, leading to an invitation from FIFA to cover international football events. Over his extensive career, Robinson has covered 13 FIFA World Cups and 10 Olympic Games, capturing iconic moments in sports history, as well as thousands of football league matches across Britain and Europe.

Unusually, though, his camera was not always pointing at the pitch, and it is his wider interest in crowds, fandom, and the bizarre or ironic moments missed by colleagues that really distinguish his work from that of other sports photographers.

‘I smell things out. I am interested in everything that happens at a football match. Not just the big moment when the ball goes in the net. I am as excited by the sideshows as the main event.’

Peter first experimented with football photography travelling the country for the Leicester-based Football League Review magazine. His influences were American documentary photographers and British style magazines such as Nova. By 1970 his talent was sufficiently recognised for FIFA to appoint him as its official photographer, and he continued to work with the organisation for the next two-and-a-half decades. His assignments included the tragic European Cup Final at the Heysal Stadium in Brussels (1985), where crowd violence resulted in 39 fatalities.

Publications

His photographs have been published in magazines all over the world and in more than 50 books, including two award-winning collections In 2003, Robinson published “Football Days,” a monograph that became a bestseller and is regarded as a definitive work on football photography. The following year, he released “1966 Uncovered,” a visual record of the 1966 World Cup. Both publications were awarded ‘Illustrated Sports Book of the Year.’

As Michael Palin wrote in the foreword to Football Days (2005):

‘Peter Robinson understands the heart and soul of the game. His eye is generous, caustic, thoughtful and celebratory. These photographs offer as subtle and incisive an insight into the appeal of football as you could hope to find.’

Exhibitions & Documentary

Robinson’s work has been featured in an exhibition about The Football League Review at The Gallery at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) where he has guest lectured at The FIFA Master course. His work was also included in The Art School Dance goes on Forever, a retrospective of 1960s creative alumni from Leicester College of Art (now De Montfort University).

Other Exhibitions

1985 Beijing China at The Peoples Art Gallery - sponsored by Kodak

This is Soccer - in August 1994 at The Association of Photographers gallery in London

Half decent football photos at The Royal Festival Hall in London July 1996

Das Spiel at the DHM - The German Historical Museum in Berlin - 2006

A documentary about Robinson’s life and work, 'The Saturday Man’, by Social Gallery, is currently in pre-production.

References

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp169509/peter-robinson

https://www.thesaturdayman.com/biography