Hans van der Meer started photographing lower league football across Europe in 1995. He went out looking for football in its original form, as it had started more than 100 years ago: a patch of land, 22 players, no spectators, maybe a horse in the next meadow.

His acute and subtle observations of the poetry and absurdity of human behaviour connect the game of football to the basic futility of the human condition. The small tragi-comedies are dwarfed by the serenity and permanence of the natural or man-made world that surrounds them but in their pathos can be found the original passion and humanity of the game.