Fair Play with Fina HESTER KEIJSER Erik Kessels Special Books Photography

Fair play met Fina - voetbal spelregels in woord en beeld
128pp formaat 11x33 cm gebrocheerd kl. plaatjes 

BEST PHOTO BOOKS… JANUARY 17, 2009 HESTER KEIJSER

Now that the excite­ment about the end of year ‘best photo books of 2008′ enu­mer­a­tions has died down in an ulti­mate cul­mi­na­tion at pho­to­eye, I can safely launch my own ret­ro­spec­tive of books which excited or inspired us last year. Since our means are too lim­ited to buy many books — let alone newly pub­lished ones — , our selec­tion will dif­fer in many aspects from the usual lists. Let’s start with this odd pub­li­ca­tion kindly loaned to us by a local col­league, who shares our love for books where the images are glued in by hand. “Fair play with Fina — soc­cer rules in word and image” is the rather unex­cit­ing title (espe­cially unex­cit­ing if you are no soc­cer fan) of this strangely long and nar­row (33 x 11cm) pub­li­ca­tion dat­ing from the seventies.

the new hotel on the grounds of the sports cen­tre where play­ers can con­cen­trate in peace and quiet on impor­tant games

Of course these odd dimen­sions are part of the charm of the book and remind you that remark­ably non-standard sizes are def­i­nitely some­thing to con­sider when design­ing your own pub­li­ca­tion and when you have the free­dom and bud­get to chose some­thing unusual. With 128 pages ‘fat­tened’ by the glued-in images it’s no unsub­stan­tional floppy brochure, but a solid enough book that you can still eas­ily hold in one hand and turn the pages with your other while stand­ing at the side of a soc­cer field, try­ing to find the rule broached by the oppo­nents of the team your kid plays in.

The ball must be made of leather. It is not allowed to play with a plas­tic ball or a ball that is cov­ered in plas­tic. The diam­e­ter should be between 71 and 68 cm.

How­ever, as they say, size doesn’t mat­ter — and this is true inso­far as it’s the images in the Fina book which make it such a joy — the very spe­cial qual­ity of the images, that is. There is irre­sistible charm in the clum­si­ness and impro­vi­sa­tion dis­played in the cross­ing out of the right ball with two plain card­board strips. Funny enough, it seems to be this white ball with which is played in all of the illustrations.

Bet­ter even than that are the sit­u­a­tions acted out by the play­ers to demon­strate faults. Note that a con­tem­po­rary ver­sion would prob­a­bly be made in the form of some kind of com­puter game, com­plete with vir­tual play­ers in vir­tual move­ments and — I almost for­got — an inter­ac­tive ele­ment. It looks like the 1970’s ver­sion must have been way more fun to make. Imag­ine, spend­ing days on the field with the pho­tog­ra­pher and some team mem­bers, every­thing payed for by the oil company.

Another note­wor­thy aspect are of course the col­ors of the repro­duc­tions. Lots of over­sa­t­ured greens, blues and oranges together with stark white and dark tones make for a coher­ent albeit not very real­is­tic color scheme. Even though repro­duc­tion qual­ity of pho­tographs may have greatly improved over the last decades, this exam­ple shows what can achieved with con­di­tions that are less than ideal. Lim­i­ta­tions in your print­ing options should be exploited to the full, not lamented.

What we of course like best about the book is the fact that all 200 images are glued in by hand, in this case by the avid col­lec­tor. Glued-in images are a way to reduce print­ing costs, or at least shift them else­where. Black & white (or sin­gle color) off­set print­ing is still less expen­sive than hav­ing full color plates made. In the case of an artist pub­li­ca­tion one could con­sider hav­ing the images printed (cheaply?) at one place (or print them your­self in a dark room), while hav­ing the body work of the book made else­where. Could this be an option for those pub­lish­ing through Blurb, but who are dis­sat­is­fied with the print quality?

For those inter­ested in pur­chas­ing their own copy of this won­drous source of inspi­ra­tion the good news is that “Fair play met Fina” (the offi­cial Dutch title) can be had for an equally fair price at sev­eral sec­ond hand sources. It’s not a collector’s item, so prices are in the 5–10 euro range, per­haps 15 for a com­plete album in good condition.
See for 10 minutes with Erik Kessels ...

See for more Special Books :

Barrage Steve McQueen Artists' Book Erik Kessels Special Books Photography http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.nl/2013/09/barrage-steve-mcqueen-artists-book-erik.html On and On Marijke van Warmerdam Artists' Book Erik Kessels Special Books Photography http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.nl/2013/07/on-and-on-marijke-van-warmerdam-artists.html 700 centenboek Jos Houweling Amsterdam 70s Erik Kessels Special Books Photography http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.nl/2013/06/700-centenboek-jos-houweling-erik.html Porträt Louise Anna Kubelka: 1978-1996 wöchentlich fotografiert Friedl Kubelka Erik Kessels Special Books Photography http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.nl/2013/07/portrat-louise-anna-kubelka-1978-1996.html Kriwet Stars Ferdinand Kriwet Artists' Book Erik Kessels Special Books Photography http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.nl/2015/07/kriwet-stars-ferdinand-kriwet-artists.html

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