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Text engl., Armenian, Azeri. Design: Kummer & Herrman, Utrecht. - Writer Arthur Huizinga and photographer Dirk-Jan Visser met during a research trip on the cultural heritage of the South Caucasus in 2006. As it often goes, their report ended in a drawer where it probably remains. But their interest for the region was sparked. The geopolitical conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the South Caucasus is largely a forgotten one. Yet, it remains a lived reality for up hundreds of thousands Azerbaijani and Armenians who were forced to seek refugee in Baku, Turkey, and Western Europe respectively. Among the dispossessed are two football teams. The Armenian team of FK Stepanakert has been isolated from all but regional football, and the Azeri football team - FK Qarabağ Ağdam - was forced into exile. In summer 2009, Huizinga and Visser met the players of FK Qarabağ Ağdam for their match with FC Twente. Subsequently, they visited the refugee camps on the border with the military buffer zone and met the relatives of deceased combatants. The demise of the once thriving football culture seemed to be an illustrative metaphor for the dead-end situation of the conflict. More trips between the Netherlands, Azerbaijan and Armenia followed. - Offside is the result of three years of fieldwork by photographer Dirk-Jan Visser and writer Arthur Huizinga. Visser and Huizinga followed the lives of six people, each connected to the two football teams - players and coaches, fighters and refugees, sons and daughters, wives and widows. Visser and Huizinga tell their story, and the story of this warzone - through football. The intimate account of two teams on opposite sides of the conflict - Azerbaijani team FK Qarabag Agdam and Armenian team FK Karabakh Stepanakert - reveals the human tragedy of a country torn apart by war and the stories of the people who have lived through it. The book combines powerful black and white documentary photography with more reflective medium format colour landscapes, together with texts that zoom in from cultural and historical context, to personal stories. Between the contemporary images, historical material also surfaces, sourced from both private photo albums of the subjects and from public archives. The result is a layered experience of the stories conveyed – mirroring the complex experiences of those who live in this torn region. The presentation of the work at the Noorderlicht Photogallery turns 6 personal stories of David Martirosyan, Aslan Kerimov, Yasem Guliyev, Levonid Oganisyan, Valide Bagirova and Geghetsikh Kirakosyan, into a physically layered space that incorporates both still and moving images as well as audio. Through images and text, Offside - Football in Exile brings the reader deep into the Caucasus region’s complexity. Both history and present conditions become visceral through the candid profiles of the individuals portrayed. These views and stories combine with the historical, cultural and geographic context presented in the book to bring the largely forgotten conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh into a poignant focus. (Press release; ydocstore.org/offside). The accompanying exhibition at Noorderlicht Gallery, Groningen, was curated by Bas Vroege.