Now that I don't play rugby anymore, I photograph it. This project is a love letter to rugby, and a personal quest to find its original  spirit. For the last fifteen years I’ve been traveling to some of the countries with the strongest tradition for the game, trying to capture its soul with my camera.

 

I’ve visited the Rugby school where, according to our own Arthurian legend, the sport was invented two hundred years ago, but the trip has also taken me to many of the other places —clubs, schools, universities, stadiums, bars...— where the spirit of true rugby was forged and still runs free: in England, where it was born and where its traditions are nurtured on impeccable grass fields by buildings that are hundreds of years old; in New Zealand, a country with four million people which lives for rugby and has been able to dominate it; in the black mining valleys of Wales, where tough forwards coming from the coal mines made other teams shake in fear in the 70s and 80s of the last century; in Hong Kong, where during carnival the sevens tournament becomes a rugby Mardi Grass and the craziest party of the year; in Scotland, where the battles against the auld enemy South of the border are now settled on a rugby pitch; in Southern France, with its rugby terroir, telluric, where enjoying the cassoulet and the local wine beforehand is as important as the match itself (or more). Also in the rugby fields of Spain, where I became a rugbyman more years ago than I care to remember.

 

This is an ongoing project, and it will not be finished until I photograph also the culture of rugby in Ireland, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

 

I hope to do this in the next few years. Please get in touch if you want to support this adventure. You can do it by buying a fine art print, by publishing a story if you are an editor, or simply by sharing it and letting people know about it.