Thomas ReedDecember 04, 2022

Tony Davis' World Cup visions

Thomas ReedDecember 04, 2022

You know Tony Davis. Even if you don’t you’ll have seen one of his 90’s football images. To call them iconic is to overblow the sense of everyday fandom which inspired them.

Tony took a cheap flight and a chance to head to Italia ‘90 and trained his camera on the filthily beautiful football fiesta which followed.

Little do people know but Tony’s greatest moment covering three World Cups went untold.

He was at the England Germany Semi-Final in 1990 and split his camera equipment into two pieces to avoid security. He kept one half and the other went in with a mate.

Yet, finding the friend in the 60,000 of the Stadia Delle Alpi proved impossible and so the images on that night are burned onto his retina and not developed into film.

Some of the greatest shots never make it onto a camera, but Tony got a fair few which captured some of the folk essence of the tournament we live life in four year cycles for.