When Saturday came: the city of Liverpool captured through its love of football – in pictures

Ken Grant was born in Liverpool in 1967, and has been photographing it since he was a teenager. His new book, A Topical Times for these Times, offers a unique perspective of his home city through the focus of football

Main image: A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant. Photograph: Ken Grant

  • From youth games and pub teams playing in district park leagues to the weekly rituals of match days at Liverpool and Everton, Ken Grant has photographed football – and the city’s relationship with it – in all its forms
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • Rarely going inside the stadiums, Grant has instead photographed in the streets and bars just outside, at pitch sides and on buses all across the city
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • Grant writes: ‘I began to photograph the districts around the Liverpool and Everton football grounds in the mid-1980s, balancing work and photography until the pictures became a trade’
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • ‘Like my father, I spent years moving between the usual places, with Saturdays at Liverpool or Everton – like you’re not supposed to do’
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • ‘After the noise and tensions of Saturdays, I’d find respite photographing the parks and youth football pitches on Sundays’
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • ‘Football was a way of starting anything; an anchor that meant I could be tolerated over the years around Walton Breck Road, Goodison Road and the parks and bars around the city’
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • ‘I had no formal plan, other than a need to photograph and a compulsion to stay close and be at touching distance over time’
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • ‘It was common to photograph in a cafe or factory during the week, and then brush past the same men on match day outside the grounds, where we’d confuse each other in our new context’
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • ‘It might take a few seconds but it could take years – to be close enough, and make a picture that’s good enough’
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • A Topical Times for these Times takes its title from the boys’ sports annuals and football yearbooks that inspired so many in the 70s and 80s
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • The book draws on the changing landscape of Liverpool as it negotiated success and tragedy, and as a new, more commercial era took hold
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • Grant’s photographs are held in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and many other collections. He teaches photography at Belfast School of Art
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.

  • A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant, is available from RRB Publishing
    A Topical Times for These Times - a Book of Liverpool Football Photographs, by Ken Grant.
Topics