Ken Grant - Dr Fun, Anfield, Liverpool c. 1998
Taken from the book 'A Topical Times for These Times.
Since the 1980’s Ken Grant has photographed football culture in Liverpool, his home city. From youth games and local bar teams playing in district park leagues, to the weekly rituals of match days at Liverpool and Everton, he has photographed the sport - and the city’s relationship with it - in all its forms. Rarely going inside the stadia, he has instead photographed in the streets and bars outside, at the pitch sides and on buses across the city over decades. With football serving as a central thread in the working and social lives of his contemporaries, it has always been an element of Grant’s wider work about the city. This book brings together his pictures of the game, the land and the people who populate it. A Topical Times for these Times, taking its title from boys sports annuals and the football yearbooks that prospered and inspired in the 1970s and 80s, draws on the changing landscape of Liverpool as it negotiated success and tragedy, and as a new commercial era took hold. The book is a devoted appreciation of football in the city, the game itself and those who are part of each.
Ken Grant was born in Liverpool in 1967. Since the 1980's he has photographed in the city and engaged in sustained projects both in the region, in Wales, and in wider Europe. He works on long term engagements with his contemporaries which eventually become books and exhibitions. His photographs are held in major collections, including those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Folkwang Museum, Essen, the James Hyman collection of British Photography and other international public and private collections.
He continues to exhibit internationally, including at Counter Space (MoMA, New York, 2011), Home Sweet Home (Arles, 2019), and Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia, 2022). A first monograph of the Liverpool photographs, The Close Season, was published in 2002 with No pain whatsoever following in 2014. Other monographs include A Topical Times for These Times (2016) and Benny Profane (2019). His work made in Wales over three decades was published as Cwm: The Fair Country in 2025. Ken was editor for the recent book on the life and work of Chris Killip (Thames & Hudson, 2022), along with his wife, Tracy Marshall-Grant and together they curated the recent career retrospective of Killip’s work which toured internationally.
His career as a teacher has included a decade leading the Documentary Photography programme in Newport, South Wales and he has supported the development of photography education through galleries in the UK and Ireland, notably as a board member at Open Eye Gallery Liverpool, at Belfast Exposed, Belfast and the Gallery of Photography (now Photo Museum Ireland), Dublin. He is currently co-course director of the MFA Photography programme at Belfast School of Art / Ulster University in Belfast.
Ken Grant - Dr Fun, Anfield, Liverpool c. 1998
Taken from the book 'A Topical Times for These Times.
Since the 1980’s Ken Grant has photographed football culture in Liverpool, his home city. From youth games and local bar teams playing in district park leagues, to the weekly rituals of match days at Liverpool and Everton, he has photographed the sport - and the city’s relationship with it - in all its forms. Rarely going inside the stadia, he has instead photographed in the streets and bars outside, at the pitch sides and on buses across the city over decades. With football serving as a central thread in the working and social lives of his contemporaries, it has always been an element of Grant’s wider work about the city. This book brings together his pictures of the game, the land and the people who populate it. A Topical Times for these Times, taking its title from boys sports annuals and the football yearbooks that prospered and inspired in the 1970s and 80s, draws on the changing landscape of Liverpool as it negotiated success and tragedy, and as a new commercial era took hold. The book is a devoted appreciation of football in the city, the game itself and those who are part of each.
Ken Grant was born in Liverpool in 1967. Since the 1980's he has photographed in the city and engaged in sustained projects both in the region, in Wales, and in wider Europe. He works on long term engagements with his contemporaries which eventually become books and exhibitions. His photographs are held in major collections, including those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Folkwang Museum, Essen, the James Hyman collection of British Photography and other international public and private collections.
He continues to exhibit internationally, including at Counter Space (MoMA, New York, 2011), Home Sweet Home (Arles, 2019), and Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia, 2022). A first monograph of the Liverpool photographs, The Close Season, was published in 2002 with No pain whatsoever following in 2014. Other monographs include A Topical Times for These Times (2016) and Benny Profane (2019). His work made in Wales over three decades was published as Cwm: The Fair Country in 2025. Ken was editor for the recent book on the life and work of Chris Killip (Thames & Hudson, 2022), along with his wife, Tracy Marshall-Grant and together they curated the recent career retrospective of Killip’s work which toured internationally.
His career as a teacher has included a decade leading the Documentary Photography programme in Newport, South Wales and he has supported the development of photography education through galleries in the UK and Ireland, notably as a board member at Open Eye Gallery Liverpool, at Belfast Exposed, Belfast and the Gallery of Photography (now Photo Museum Ireland), Dublin. He is currently co-course director of the MFA Photography programme at Belfast School of Art / Ulster University in Belfast.