Analog photography is the new passion of football players

It has been 5 years since Frank Ocean appeared at the Met Gala with a Contax T3, one of the most popular analog cameras among photographers who decide to get serious or amateurs with high spending power. Vogue tasked him with photographing the celebrities present at the event: portraits of Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Jeff Bezos, and Jared Leto came out of that roll of film. In short, it was a firsthand account from Ocean's POV - a truly interesting initiative by the world's most famous fashion magazine. It seems to have inspired everyone, including football players. In fact, both football players and football clubs. The top European leagues, as well as the Conference League, Europa League, and Champions League, have come to an end, and the players have indulged in the usual celebrations - this time, without overdoing it, considering that the upcoming European Championship and Copa América do not allow them to lose focus from their commitments on the field. So, they opted for a more subdued approach: less alcohol and more analog cameras, which you might have seen in the hands of Van Dijk, Joselu, Carlos Augusto, and Cuadrado.

They used them at different times. While the Inter wingers and the Merengues forward won a trophy with their clubs and therefore could bring the cameras during the celebratory parade in the city center, Van Dijk preferred to document through images Jürgen Klopp's last match with the Reds. We do not know how the photos taken by Van Dijk turned out, but at the end of the 2023/24 season, Liverpool's social media manager showed a certain passion for analog photography, publishing shots by Steven Park, a fan who captured the final moments of the German coach on Liverpool's bench. While there are no photos from Carlos Augusto, those taken by Joselu a few days ago - much more emotional than his teammates who had played and won several Champions League finals - were shared on X. Like Carlos Augusto, Joselu used a disposable camera, while Cuadrado preferred a Polaroid. The situation is different for Virgil Van Dijk: the keenest observers on Reddit identified the model of his analog camera. It is a Fujifilm X100V, which on the market is nearly €2000.

An old article on The Sun (2018) talked about how football players like Hector Bellerín, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Dele Alli hired personal photographers to manage their Instagram profiles. It was a different period, coinciding with the hypebeast era, when football players were discovering fashion - particularly streetwear in all its nuances. Chamberlain and Bellerín, both at Arsenal at the time, chose Matt Gordon and Kieran Clarke. Perhaps football players are discovering the charm of being on the other side of the camera, realizing that, at least once in a while, it can be interesting to capture moments rather than being captured.