Aries x Jogging

A look back at the Aries x Jogging launch party.

Phocéenne Fresco

In 1993, Olympique de Marseille lifted the European Cup trophy. The club, and behind it the city of Marseille, experienced Elysian glory and a moment of eternity. This legendary sporting season, which has since become a contemporary myth, was followed and documented by Olivier Amsellem, who accompanied OM from 1992 to 1993. At the age of 22, he toured Europe with the club, from Marseille to Munich, via Brighton, Glasgow, Moscow, Bucharest, Bruges and Glentoran. Protected by the cool glass of his lens, he immortalizes players and fans in an epic fresco.

Resembling blue-and-white abstractions, these compositions merge with historical and mythological painting. Moving fabrics spread out like antique drapery, faces and bodies beading with sweat and heroic faces transcend the clothes - the supporters' synthetic jackets, the staff's baggy suits, the footballers' shiny jerseys - and hairstyles of the period, and inscribe the year 1993 in myth.

In one of the photos, Patrice "Depe" de Perreti, an emblematic figure of the South Winners and founder of the Marseille Trop Puissant supporters' club, appears. Like a grunge prophet, he stands bare-chested with a blue and white scarf around his neck, haranguing a crowd of supporters who spread out like a baroque cloud. This crowd of shimmering orange bombers melts into an indistinct mass, quickly plunged into the half-light of a match night, where all that can be seen is a huge banner, revealing the words "faith", "heart" and "fervor". As if in a history painting or a mythological or religious scene, Apotheosis-style, this Depe in combat dominates a scene of cinematic dynamism. In this image, and in the whole series, there's the blurred, constrasted, heroic and destructive dynamism of a certain low, hazy 1990s aesthetic, a la Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. Here, capo De Perreti creates the mythology of a supporterism that continues to this day, and which can be seen in other photos in the series, such as those showing Boli in action, or the grouped portraits of the committee, a sort of Ronde de Nuit by Rembraedt in garish ties. This fervor with a cigarette in the mouth is a synthesis of the epic and the popular, the legendary and the everyday.

Emmanuelle Luciani

SWS