British football culture has long fascinated Richard the Photocopier. Its idiocies, its fashions, its smells, its march from being a rabid, unregulated, violent cavalcade to a bovine testing ground for control through entertainment, have been played out in front of him since the mid 1970s. And very often, he couldn’t be arsed understanding it. It was an ever-present shade, formed from Albion’s darkest, most begrimed and befouled underground recesses. It needed no explaining, outside of it being a perfect help-meet for the heady, Ice Cream War dreams of British militarism. These photocopies were deliberately photographed in a manner that left questions, showed edges, felt scruffy, uneasy. Like the past they depict.
Here we see a photograph of a photocopy of a photograph found on the internet of what must be some Northwestern pagga from the early 1990s. That shirt with the number on it -and the “shirts outside jeans” look on the left, so beloved of the Oasisini tribes that settled in the North at that time – maybe gives the clue. On the right is a drawing in biro of an Arditi officer (Reparto d’Assalto) from 1918. The quote is an example of Classical vainglory from Kaiser Wilhelm II
Here we see a photograph of a photocopy of some prime time 1980s small town rucking on the verdant greensward of some team like Wigan or Barnsley. Note the classic 1984-5 look of Lee, sambas and zipped up ST tracky top in the background. Below is a felt tip and pencil drawing of a German pilot of what must be a bomber or large aircraft, 1916. The words are the author’s own, he thinks.
A striking shot of a full scale ruck from the mid 1980s (the buttoned up sports casual cardigan is the giveaway here). Below is a biro drawing of the classic French Adrian helmet with a sniper’s vizor. Military reminiscence courtesy of the Photocopier’s father.
