two everton books
Two everton photobooks, but what is the difference between them?
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Having two photobooks out about Everton, in particular Goodison Park, can be confusing. And I often get asked “what’s the difference?”
Well, if you’ve read my previous blog on my second book, Commence Operation Goodison Farewell, being stocked in Waterstones then you’ll already know that my first book was never intentionally created to go to the public market.
So really, the first book was a happy accident which led to me creating the following book. And so on.
Forever Everton: A Goodison Farewell
Let’s talk about ‘Forever Everton: A Goodison Farewell’ first.
There’s no chronological order to this book, and certainly no real ‘story line’ so to speak. It’s a photographic love letter to my second home - Goodison Park. This piece was crafted using a variety of cameras and styles of photography. From analog to digital and even phone captures. Starting back in 2017 and going right the way through to 2024, just before the final season (we’ll come to that when I discuss the second book).
Some film experimentation in 2024.
With the first book, I wanted to put Goodison Park at the heart of the piece. I didn’t want to focus much, or at all, on the negativity that was surrounding the club during the years I photographed. The protests, the animosity, and the relegation battles.
Let’s roll back to 2017, where the earliest photos came from. I was in Uni over in Lincoln studying Media Production and at that time photography was a hobby of mine.
I was very lucky to be invited in to photograph a match pitchside at Goodison Park, and was able to photograph players like Seamus Coleman, Romelu Lukaku, Leighton Baines, and more. So it felt only right that the book contained those photos, the place where it all began for me.
You’ll find a lot more analog photography in this book, this was a period of photographic experimentation for me and in doing that I was trying out and using lots of different cameras, with lots of different film types.
Sometimes it could be so frustrating with the older cameras, not knowing if they’ve worked properly and not being able to know until you’ve paid for the lab to develop it. It’s always gutting when the photos come back blank, or too underexposed, overexposed or just not as you were anticipating. But that’s sometimes the beauty of experimentation.
More film, sunshine on the Gwladys.
It’s a little easier on digital, there’s almost no limit. So in shooting film, I learned a lot. But Goodison Park felt perfect on film, the Grand Old Lady, steeped in history with seats made of wood, flaky royal blue paint, the cracks in turnstile doors, and old chipped bricks.
Film and Goodison went hand in hand. Rustic, historic, classic. You can’t beat it.
The ‘boring bit’ below, all you need to know RE sizing and paper.
Info:
Size: A4 (210 mm x 297 mm) - Landscape
Adhesive Casebound, Full-colour printing, 128 pages, 170gsm Silk
Cover: Full-colour printing (outside), Matt Lamination (outside)
End Papers: Stock Black
Stock can be found at: Victoria Gallery & Museum, Linghams in Heswall and Museum of Liverpool
Commence Operation Goodison Farewell
Moving on to Commence Operation Goodison Farewell, the second book. My personal favourite one of the two.
Starting with the title, a little play on words for the infamous ‘commence operation Goodison exercise’ that us matchgoing Evertonians became accustomed to. Felt like a good nod to a little Goodison feature that I’ll weirdly miss.
This book differs mostly to the first as it’s a complete chronological documentation of every single home game at Goodison Park during the final men’s season, including the two women’s fixtures that featured during the season. All home cup games and the friendly against Roma in the summer.
Over the course of the season in creating the book, I had a decision to make and kept asking myself ‘do I put the scorelines from each game in?’ as it started to look a little bleak before David Moyes returned.
David Moyes returns as Everton Manager.
However, I made the decision to keep the scores in alongside the fixtures. That way it really was a complete documentation. It means we can flick back to a certain fixture and reflect back, I sometimes do this with the final derby, some of my favourite photos came from that day. It was chaos, but good chaos.
Most of this book has been shot using digital photography, although there’s a few games where film does feature.
Unlike the first book, I wanted to include the fans as much as possible too. The fans are the heartbeat of the club, of Goodison and it felt only right to document them as much as I could, while also still focusing on the stadium.
With this being a full chronological story format, there’s more pages than in the first book. And it was incredibly difficult to choose between some photos, especially with the front cover. However, I have kept to the same landscape format alongside the same paper weight etc. You can find the information below.
Info:
Size: A4 (210 mm x 297 mm) - Landscape
Adhesive Casebound, Full-colour printing, 172 pages, 170gsm Silk
Cover: Full-colour printing (outside), Matt Lamination (outside)
End Papers: Stock Black
Stock can be found at: Victoria Gallery & Museum, Linghams in Heswall, Museum of Liverpool & Waterstones Liverpool ONE
On the shelves at Waterstones, Liverpool ONE.
What’s next?
Over the past few months to a year I have had plenty of requests for a book documenting our first season at the new place, Hill Dickinson Stadium, at first I’d said no.
However, I’m delighted to announce that I will be producing a 3rd book ‘On The Banks’. This will be available for purchase in the summer of 2026 but will not be a full documentation of every single game, more snippets of the season, the surroundings, architecture and the fans.
I’m looking forward to sharing more in the coming months.
The working title.
