Ultras

I took this shot in Pescara during a night of celebration and mayhem—where passion collided with authority, and the air thickened with smoke, sweat, and sound. It wasn’t violence, not quite. It was euphoria channelling itself into a public rite, where boundaries between fanfare and disorder blurred in real time.

From a photographic standpoint, the scene presented a compositional chaos that demanded structure. I used the police car as an anchor. It sits dead centre, unintentionally symbolic, both literally and metaphorically surrounded. The crowd’s energy surges outward from it, flags, limbs, phones, chants—all reaching towards the bus in the background that carries the real object of devotion: the team.

Technically, this isn’t a clean image, and it shouldn’t be. The light was mixed and volatile: dusk mingling with artificial glare, flares burning off to the side, and a waft of smoke diffusing the entire palette. I exposed for the highlights, intentionally letting parts of the foreground fall into soft shadow. It gave the frame some breathing space and preserved that sudden burst of headlight glare—a jarring intrusion that seemed to mirror the tension of the moment.

The image isn’t about action but atmosphere. Look at the body language: the man in the foreground, arms up in either triumph or confrontation; the officer exiting the car, half-obscured by light; the mass on the bus, almost biblical in their elevated detachment. All of this points to a ritual that’s part sport, part identity, and wholly visceral.

This is photography as documentation, not decoration. It’s not designed to please. It’s meant to place you there, on the edge of order, where euphoria becomes its own form of pressure.