Toby Binder is a social documentary photographer based between Germany and Argentina. Born in Esslingen, Germany, in 1977, he studied communication design at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. He first visited Scotland in 1996 and returned in 2004 to begin the work presented here.

This gallery brings together photographs made in Glasgow and Edinburgh in 2004 and 2005, and Belfast in 2006 and 2017. The Scottish photographs form part of Youth of the UK, Binder’s study of young people in working-class communities in former industrial towns and cities. Football appears throughout the work: on streets and informal pitches, in back courts and on open ground.

Binder first photographed in Belfast in 2006. Following the United Kingdom’s 2016 referendum on European Union membership, he returned to work across Protestant–unionist and Catholic–nationalist communities. The photographs became Wee Muckers – Youth of Belfast, published by Kehrer Verlag in 2019. The project follows a generation born after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and concentrates on experiences shared by young people across both traditions: friendship, boredom, family life, unemployment, social pressure and restricted prospects.

Binder’s approach depends on repeated visits, time and sustained contact. The photographs record young people in the streets and shared spaces they use each day, allowing individual character and relationships to remain visible alongside the social and political conditions surrounding them.

The selected photographs presented in this gallery are available for image licensing through British Culture Archive. A selection is also available as BCA edition prints.