Featured photographer

Moira Lovell: Stand Your Ground

Showered and dressed (wearing their training kit) the Doncaster Rovers Belles perform once more before they return home after the match. Away from the pitch and positioned in the changing room, the footballers treat Moira Lovell’s camera like an opponent.

Standing next to their manager the central dynamic of the resultant images is an acute tension between subjects. The photographs deliver a detached yet graphic report of the complex relationship between the individual player and manager. In front of the camera some are assured of the position they must now play. Confident, perhaps due to their age or length of service as a player, they stand tall and proud even elbowing their manager out of the way. Others are more uncertain of their new role and we see their mild self-consciousness, tilting their heads in an attempt to feminise themselves or tensing their frame with their arms hanging awkwardly.

Stand Your Ground has been commissioned by Pavilion as part of the Pavilion Commissions Programme 2008.

Related Link: www.moiralovell.com | Pavilion Online Gallery

Video Download: Artist Interview | Transcript Download: (PDF 37KB)

Stand Your Ground. Liz and John, 2008