Draft:Peter Robinson (Photographer)

{{AFC submission|d|ilc|u=89.197.100.226|ns=118|decliner=Paul W|declinets=20250421184229|ts=20250331113314}}

{{AFC comment|1=Subject may be notable, but article needs more work, less opinion (eg: 2nd para in career section; WP:NPOV) and more citations (too many statements are unsupported by reliable independent secondary sources). Two paras (1st and 4th in career section) give slightly different accounts of the start of his football photography career - these need to be consolidated with the facts best supported by the sources. Was Football Days published in 2003 or 2005? Paul W (talk) 18:42, 21 April 2025 (UTC)}}

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Christopher Peter Robinson (born February 1944), known as Peter Robinson, is a British photographer known for his football images. He was FIFA's official photographer for over two decades and, in 2015, was appointed as the photography consultant to the FIFA Museum in Zurich.{{Cite web|url=https://xposure.net/photographer/peter-robinson/|title=Peter Robinson}}

Early life and education

Robinson was born in February 1944, the son of a policeman and a mother (Vera Kingston) who was an Olympic swimmer. He was educated at Leicester College of Art and the Royal College of Art, where he developed a passion for photography.{{Cite web |title=Atrium Gallery – Leicester Gallery |url=https://thegallery.dmu.ac.uk/atrium-gallery/ |access-date=2025-06-17 |website=thegallery.dmu.ac.uk}}

Career

Robinson began his professional photography career in 1965, contributing to The Football League magazine,{{Cite web|url=https://www.theleaguepaper.com/|title=Home|website=The League Paper}} leading to an invitation from FIFA to cover international football events. Over his extensive career, Robinson covered 13 FIFA World Cups and 10 Olympic Games,{{Cite web|url=https://www.thesaturdayman.com/biography|title=Biography|website=THE SATURDAY MAN}} and 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.{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}}

'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.{{Cite book |last=Robinson |first=Peter |title=Football Days: Classic Football Photographs |publisher=Mitchell Beazley |year=2003 |isbn=978-1840008432 |publication-date=16 October 2003 |language=en}}

Robinson 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.{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}} 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.{{Cite web |title=The Grecian Archive - Photography Collection {{!}} Peter Robinson |url=https://grecianarchive.exeter.ac.uk/collections/show/34 |access-date=2025-06-18 |website=grecianarchive.exeter.ac.uk}} His assignments included the tragic European Cup Final at the Heysal Stadium in Brussels (1985),{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}} where crowd violence resulted in 39 fatalities.

In April 2022, an article in The New York Times{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/3264410/2022/04/22/peter-robinson-football-soccer-photography/|title='I'm looking for confrontation': Inside the work of Peter Robinson, one of soccer's greatest living photographers|first=Pablo|last=Maurer|work=The New York Times |date=April 26, 2022|via=NYTimes.com}} / The Athletic described him as "arguably the world's greatest living soccer photographer."{{Cite news |last=Maurer |first=Pablo |date=2022-04-26 |title='I'm looking for confrontation': Inside the work of Peter Robinson, one of soccer's greatest living photographers |url=https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/3264410/2022/04/22/peter-robinson-football-soccer-photography/ |access-date=2025-06-18 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

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.{{Cite web |title=Peter Robinson |url=https://xposure.net/photographer/peter-robinson/ |access-date=2025-06-18 |website=Xposure |language=en-US}} The following year, he released 1966 Uncovered, a visual record of the 1966 World Cup.{{Cite web |title=1966 Uncovered |url=https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/1966-uncovered-book-peter-robinson-9781845332358 |access-date=2025-06-18 |website=World of Books |language=en}} Both publications were awarded 'Illustrated Sports Book of the Year.'British Sports Book Awards{{Circular reference|date=March 2025}}

As Michael Palin wrote in the foreword to Football Days (2005)https://biblio.co.uk/book/football-days-classic-football-photographs-robinson/d/1462999589

'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 and 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,{{Cite web|url=https://socialgallery.co.uk/projects/dance-goes-on-forever/|title=The Art School Dance Goes on Forever | Social Gallery}} 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{{Cite web|url=https://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/das-spiel/mup.html|title=Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin|website=www.dhm.de}}

A documentary featuring Robinson's work is currently in pre-production.

References

External links

[https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp169509/peter-robinson Peter Robinson - National Portrait Gallery]