Max Pinckers’s Spectacular World Cup

Pinckers usually works with Victoria Gonzalez-Figueras, his wife and collaborator, and with equipment that allows for a specific lighting style. In Qatar, he had to work alone (or with extremely rare assistance from me), under the consistently bright desert sun. During our days crisscrossing Doha, from team training sessions and matches to quieter explorations of the city, Pinckers searched for moments, or aspects, in which both the artifice of the tournament and its supporting structure were visible. There is no way to exaggerate quite how thoroughly the World Cup took over Qatar. The country is small—a bit smaller than Connecticut, with a population slightly larger than Brooklyn’s. Soccer, FIFA, and Qatar’s branding of the competition were plastered onto every skyscraper, every sliding door, every bus stop, every polite crowd marshal we encountered, from the moment we stepped off the plane. The World Cup was omnipresent and, in some senses, seemed larger than Qatar itself. A good deal of the infrastructure built for the event, including stadiums and trailer parks for visiting fans, will be dismantled or repurposed as soon as it is over.