Reading photographs/Away at York

Posts have been a bit sporadic of late, for which we're sorry; it's not been for want of things to think about at Oxford, more a lack of time. We hope to be back up and running again shortly, but in the meantime, we've been mulling over a new idea.

We were interested to read OUFC's chairman write at some length in the Stevenage programme about a particular photo from the season's opening game. It was, of course, a game that was potent in symbolism, narrative, and ultimately drama, and Kelvin Thomas' words related that photo to what he saw as the club's aims. We were interested that he spent some time talking about an image, which of course has been a core focus of this site, but we also see a burgeoning interest in images and imagery around the club as banners and standards spring up with increasing frequency and imagination, and away games seem to prompt new visual celebrations of our club.

We Are Oxford United has always been interested in these images and symbols, and tried to steer away from photos of what takes place on the pitch. However, we thought we might start publishing a series of occasional posts that look at images of this Oxford side, but try to understand them as symbols rather than simple records of a moment in time. We thought we might as well start with that fantastic image that Kelvin Thomas wrote about - it'll follow next week.

p.s. if you're interested in what we thought of York: it feels strange that our scheduled league games with this club are out of the way already, particularly given how hard and closely fought they've been. Perhaps it's just that, but something tells us that that York side will yet have an important role to play in the eventual outcome of our season.

[Portrait of Man Ray and Salvador Dali, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42535 DLC (b&w film copy neg.), courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons. The image's integrity has been retained.]