TITLE: Bosfights/ Live Free

Hooliganism has disappeared from the European football stadiums, but the fight has never stopped. Fighters who volunteered to fight for the colors of their club recently found a new home: remote forests. Teams compete with each other in a very organized way, with rules - and strict secrecy.

It is known that such forest fights take place in countries such as Russia and Poland. But they also regularly take place in Belgium. Why do these men do this for pleasure? Three years ago I decided to make an attempt to gain access to this hermetically sealed world.


The doors opened increasingly hesitantly for me. But the search swallowed me up more than I could ever have imagined. In April 2018 I was arrested and I ended up in jail for three weeks. Police and justice do not believe that I am investigating this subculture, but believe that I am involved. All my images were confiscated. Until today I received nothing in return - the police and the public prosecutor point each other's fingers.

Still I worked on. By searching for the material that I had already sent, I was able to recover a small part of years of labor. Of the thousands of images I have saved forty, sometimes of poor quality.

In addition, I have bundled newspaper articles, my interrogations, police statements, testimonies, screen shots, the diary of my captivity and screenshots of smartphone films, on which I can be seen as a photographer among the fighting parties.
My goal was once to document forest fights. Against my will, I have become part of my work myself.

AUTHOR: sebastian steveniers (Belgium)

Sebastian Steveniers
Dennenlaan 15a
2020 ANTWERP
BELGIUM
0032499427627
sebastian.steveniers@gmail.com
www.Sebastiansteveniers.be
2009-2014 Bachelor Photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) GENT,BELGIUM
2014-... Working daily for the Belgian leading newspaper “DE STANDAARD”, making portraits and documentaries about all themes national and international. Besides that working on different long term documentaries

Hooliganism has disappeared from the European football stadiums, but the fight has never stopped. Fighters who volunteered to fight for the colors of their club recently found a new home: remote forests. Teams compete with each other in a very organized way, with rules - and strict secrecy.

It is known that such forest fights take place in countries such as Russia and Poland. But they also regularly take place in Belgium. Why do these men do this for pleasure? Three years ago I decided to make an attempt to gain access to this hermetically sealed world.


The doors opened increasingly hesitantly for me. But the search swallowed me up more than I could ever have imagined. In April 2018 I was arrested and I ended up in jail for three weeks. Police and justice do not believe that I am investigating this subculture, but believe that I am involved. All my images were confiscated. Until today I received nothing in return - the police and the public prosecutor point each other's fingers.

Still I worked on. By searching for the material that I had already sent, I was able to recover a small part of years of labor. Of the thousands of images I have saved forty, sometimes of poor quality.

In addition, I have bundled newspaper articles, my interrogations, police statements, testimonies, screen shots, the diary of my captivity and screenshots of smartphone films, on which I can be seen as a photographer among the fighting parties.
My goal was once to document forest fights. Against my will, I have become part of my work myself.