What a shot! Our Boro life is sign-posted with iconic images: horizontal hero Massimo Maccarone flying headlong into history; the champagne spraying at Cardiff; Juninho slumped in tears. And many, many more.
Photos capture a personal split second of heightened awareness. We all experience the drama from different angles and distances but usually there is a brilliant image that crystalises our history. You all know them.
‘Shot!’, the new book by club author Anthony Vickers, picks out some of the most iconic of those and combines them with evocative and atmospheric images of the mood swings of supporters plus revealing behind-the-scenes shots of the players and the stadium to act as a portal to some great Riverside era memories.
A picture paints a thousand words. They capture not just a physical moment in time but also a whole box set of emotions and sensations and spark a neural network of context and connections. They are portals to past sensations, to sounds, colours and passions. They make memories more vivid. That’s why we linger over them so intently.
It is not easy to get a great football photograph. It takes concentration, timing, judgement, instinct and a dash of luck to catch that fractional flash of truth. It may be the action but just as often is the reaction of players or an explosion of joy in the stands. The snapper needs to be alive to that.
There is no posing, no framing and there are no retakes. It is dynamic. The action and moods swing wildly. To preserve history and emotion for posterity amid the maelstrom of the moment seems almost impossible. Yet they do it.
The emotional universe of a match includes the crowd. In fact, it is the tangible swirls of passion that give a game intensity and meaning and a sharp shot of the crowd tells so many important stories of raw humanity.
This book aims to bring all those elements together. It includes some of the most evocative images of the Riverside era and many never before published shots of seismic moments from revealing new angles.
There are those that transcend the action and capture the essence of the human spirit with the focus on the supporters’ symphony of emotion as they are put through the wringer or see cherished dreams realised. Every true Boro will recognise themselves in moments at both ends of the spectrum.