Photographer Mary McCartney has revealed she would love her next project to be with Liverpool FC – but she cannot get the club to agree to it.
McCartney, the daughter of Beatles superstar and Liverpudlian Sir Paul, said she is fascinated by the rituals of footballers.
Her first solo exhibition was a photographic study behind the scenes of the Royal Ballet and she would like to do something similar with Liverpool.
She told the Press Association: “I really want to go and get embedded with a football team, I really want to go to Liverpool, but they won’t let me.
“Like I did with the Royal Ballet, I’ve been writing to Liverpool FC. They are not having me yet but I’m going to keep trying.
“It’s a difficult thing to agree to allow someone in, they have to focus and you can’t just go in. I understand why they are reluctant but I think they should just let me do it.
“It’s the devotion and the commitment, it’s the physicality and dedicating a big portion of your life to something.”
If she does not succeed with the Reds she would be willing to look elsewhere, possibly in the direction of her father’s preferred team.
She said: “I think I would try another team, I would have to think about it. My husband is a Liverpool fan but my dad’s family are Everton.
“Maybe we will have to go there next but maybe they won’t be happy if they know I asked Liverpool first!”
“It is a hard thing, it’s a private space and it would be nerve-wracking, I would find it quite daunting, the challenge of showing the less-seen aspects of what goes on behind the scenes.
“Also football is quite superstitious so if I went and did a game and they lost then I think they would never want me back, but if I did it and they won they might allow me back.”
McCartney has just produced a book of photographs from a night she spent backstage at an all-male production of Twelfth Night starring Mark Rylance in 2013 where she again examines the rituals of a performance.
She said: “I asked Mark if I could take pictures of him putting his make-up on to become Olivia because I love that transformation. I’m so interested in backstage and what goes on before that performance. A lot goes on.
“I went thinking I would leave once Mark was dressed but I stayed that one evening and watched Mark and the ensemble cast and it was beautiful, they carried on as usual. This book shows the intimacy and ritual. The adventure of it was so unexpected.
“I felt I was coming into a world that was well established, they have a ping pong table in the basement and a chill out area.
“In the interval Mark wrote letters, replying to fans that had written to him through the theatre, and when he comes off he decompresses and meditates.”
Rylance added: “When you’re in front of a lot of people you project a lot of imaginative energy, you enlarge yourself and you get a lot of stuff projected on to you, so at the end I take that time to bring my energy, a quieter energy, back and let go all of that stuff.
“It’s a little strange for me sharing the ritual afterwards, it’s a little bit exposing but that is all right.”
Rylance has just returned to the London stage with his play Nice Fish transferring to the Harold Pinter Theatre from New York.
He said: “I really love being back on the London stage, we were in a wonderful place called St Anne’s Warehouse in New York but this is a West End theatre like a Broadway theatre, I’ve played it twice before and it’s a gorgeous theatre. People have come out of the play saying: is this real?”
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