Sebastian Steveniers

Bosfights/ Live Free

BOSFIGHTS / LIVE FREE Fighters who volunteered to fight for the colors of their club recently found a new home: remote forests. Teams compete with each other in a very organized way, with rules - and strict secrecy. Why do these men do this for pleasure? Three years ago I decided to make an attempt to gain access to this hermetically sealed world. The doors opened increasingly hesitantly for me. But the search swallowed me up more than I could ever have imagined. In April 2018 I was arrested and I ended up in jail for three weeks. Police and justice do not believe that I am investigating this subculture, but believe that I am involved. All my images were confiscated. Until today I received nothing in return. Still I worked on. By searching for the material that I had already sent, I was able to recover a small part of years of labor. Of the thousands of images I have saved forty, sometimes of poor quality. The reason why some faces are blurred is because certain people do not want to be recognizable for legal reasons. My goal was once to document forest fights. Against my will, I have become part of my work myself.