Football plays a major role in the Giesel family. On two separate occasions, the game of football proved pivotal to Joachim Giesel’s career as a photographer. His first fee came from the youth magazine Rasselbande for his photographs of the international match between West Germany and the Soviet Union on September 15, 1956, in Hanover. At the time, Giesel was just sixteen years old and photographed the significant event with his first camera, a Voigtländer Bessa. The path to his first permanent position as a press photographer was paved in 1961 after the final whistle of a match by SV Arminia Hannover, where Giesel had been playing since he was eleven: During a player interview, sports reporter Hans Rohrberg encouraged him to apply for a position at the Hannoversche Presse after completing his training as a photographer.
Throughout his career, Giesel was frequently found with his camera on the sidelines, whether working for the Hannoversche Presse, Bergmann-Verlag, or the soccer magazine kicker. He photographs legends like Uwe Seeler and Uli Hoeneß and witnesses historic matches. Working for Bergmann-Verlag, he photographs players before and during various Bundesliga and international matches. The portraits are printed on 9×6 cm trading cards and sold at newsstands for just a few pfennigs. Children and adults alike stick them in scrapbooks, trade them with one another, and have them signed by their heroes. The scrapbooks are the precursors to the Panini sticker albums that remain popular to this day.
On the occasion of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, Giesel takes portraits of the players on the West German national team, led by Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller. Four years later, he documented the World Cup in West Germany, where the national teams of the host country and the GDR faced off for the first and only time. Starting in the 1970s, footballers are no longer in demand solely on the field; they also earn lucrative side income as brand ambassadors for products of West German business and industry. With the establishment of the Bundesliga and coverage on television via the Sportschau and in the press via the football magazine kicker, the popularity of football and individual players rises. New economic and advertising sectors are accelerating the commercialization of sports, from which Giesel also benefits. The most prominent soccer players of the era pose for his camera: Gerd Müller advertises a Telefunken color television in 1969, while “Kaiser” Franz models for the stationery manufacturer Pelikan in 1978. Then as now, soccer is more than just a sport; it is a mass phenomenon that fosters a sense of identity and moves an audience of millions. As an avid soccer fan, Giesel captures every facet of the sport through his lens, whether as a photojournalist on the sidelines or as a commercial photographer in the studio.
KATRIN KAISER
| Bernd Bransch at the football match DDR – Brazil during the 1974 FIFA World Cup at the Niedersachsenstadion, Hanover, June 26, 1974
| Gerd Müller during a photo shoot for Telefunken, Hanover, 1969 (C-print, 2024)
| Gerd Müller during advertising photo shoots for Telefunken with television sets and advertising displays, Hanover, 1969
| Telefunken, advertisement: Zwei Stars für Mexico (Two Stars for Mexico), in: Hör Zu!, issue no. 17, May 1, 1970
| Telefunken, record: Tooore!! – Harry Valérien im Gespräch mit Gerd Müller (Tooore!! – Harry Valérien in conversation with Gerd Müller), Hanover, 1970
| Bernd Bransch at the East Germany–Brazil football match during the 1974 World Cup at the Niedersachsenstadion, Hanover, June 26, 1974 (C-print, 2024)
| Report on the journey of the tourist delegation to the football match DDR – Brazil during the 1974 FIFA World Cup in connection with the “Aktion Leder,” Berlin, June 27, 1974, Stasi Records Archive, Federal Archives (BArch), MfS, HA XVIII, no. 20386, fols. 347–348, fol. 237
| Kopfball (Header), (Uli Hoeneß at the football match between FC Bayern Munich and Hannover 96 at the Niedersachsenstadion), Hanover, August 10, 1976 (C-print, 2024)
| Giesel, Joachim: Meine Kamera und ich sahen. Das Spiel des Jahres (My Camera and I Saw. The Match of the Year), in: Rasselbande, issue no. 22, October 24, 1956, pp. 500–501
| Joachim Giesel and Franz Beckenbauer with Carlo von Tiedemann and an unidentified person during a photo shoot for Pelikan, December 28, 1978 (Silver gelatin baryta paper, 2024)
| Entry by Franz Beckenbauer in Joachim Giesel’s guestbook, no place, December 28, 1978
| Pelikan, Franz Beckenbauer training ball, Hanover, 1978/79