PROJECT TITLE

Not About Football

TIME AND PLACE

2009 Madrid, Spain

DESCRIPTION

In a time when Real Madrid is spending millions on mega-stars, the photographer focuses his series Not About Football on the Orcasitas FC, an amateur football team in the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. Its players are plumbers, postmen, butchers, who once had the dream of reaching the top, but never succeeded. They are training twice a week after a hard day’s work, and playing every Sunday at the local football pitch for a small audience, mainly their relatives. And even if they don’t earn millions or play in grand stadiums, they have all the passion and put their hearts in the game. That’s why this series is not only about football. It’s about life, fight, mud, love. It’s about the real gladiators of football.

Dimitri himself practiced football for many years in his childhood, later he also became four times a champion in sport climbing and says the sport taught him courage, perseverance and discipline. That is why he chooses this photographic series to complete his Master's Degree in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism at EFTI Centro Internacional de Fotografia y Cine, Madrid in 2009.

The project enjoys a huge media interest in a country with deep traditions in the world's most famous sport, such as Spain. In the same year, Dimitri realises his first solo exhibition with photographs from the series. When it is time to take down the expo, a man enters the gallery and says to him in English: "Who is the author of this exhibition? Could you send me the photographs?". This man is David Alan Harvey - one of the greatest photographers in the world, who later publishes the series in the Burn Magazine.