Our Strength is Your Strength — Queensmead Stadium, Lusaka, Zambia, 2007

"Our Strength is Your Strength" — Queensmead Stadium, Lusaka, Zambia, 2007 Fine Art Print — African Arenas Series by Thomas Hoeffgen

Two players wait in the foreground, shoulders soft, backs to the camera, watching the game from the sideline. Across the pitch, their opponents move in the harsh midday light. Behind them, a vast whitewashed wall carries the ghostly remains of two painted billboards — Handyman Paradise on the left, PPC Cement: Our Strength is Your Strength on the right — the paint blistered and peeling in the Zambian sun.

Hoeffgen stepped onto the pitch between games to get this shot, chasing the depth of perspective that only comes from being inside the space rather than watching from its edge. The two blurred figures in the foreground pull the eye through the frame like a tunnel, landing on the players and then the wall behind them — a perfectly layered image of waiting, watching, and the worn beauty of a ground that has seen thousands of games.

The billboard text, almost accidental in its placement, reads like a motto for the sport itself.

Shot on medium format digital in Lusaka in 2007, during the same Zambia trip that produced Welcome to Sunset Stadium.

African Arenas was published by Hatje Cantz (2010) and exhibited at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin, the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Tampa Museum of Art. Hoeffgen is a recipient of the International Photography Award and the PDN Photo Annual Award.

Available as a museum-quality fine art print.