There’s something about the weight of memory – the way it settles into muscle, how it lingers in a room long after the final whistle. For photographer Ryan Brabazon, the Sydney Swans change room isn’t just a place of preparation and sweat-slick rituals – it’s a personal landscape. Once a player himself, Brabazon returns not as athlete, but as documentarian, camera in hand, attuned to the stillness between sprints.

His images are quiet and visceral – a freckled face staring down the lens, a body folded over in exhaustion, the quiet clatter of boots in the tunnel. “Having a deep respect and understanding of the players went a long way when it came to capturing authentic moments,” Brabazon shared. “Knowing what they’re experiencing allowed me to appreciate their perspective – and to know when to lift my camera, or put it down.”

“There were moments I remembered from when I played – the isolation, the inner chaos masked by routine. Since I left the football club, I’d always wanted to return and shoot honest photos that reflected my experiences. They were often confronting and challenging.”

There’s an honesty here that cuts through the usual spectacle of sport. Instead of action shots and stadium roars, we see solitude, recovery, closeness. “Despite football being a team sport, there are so many moments where you’re totally alone with your thoughts,” he reflects. “Even in a crowded change room, you're disconnected – and those are the moments that stood out to me the most.”

For Brabazon, this body of work is more than documentary – it’s a reckoning. “Football was everything to me, but it didn’t unfold the way I imagined. I distanced myself from it,” he says. “Returning now gave me a chance to reconnect to something that once defined me – and to see it in a new light.”

“I think sport shows something pretty real about being human,” he adds. “It’s less about winning and losing – it becomes a source of meaning. All that time and energy poured into something that might never fully come together? That’s what shapes us.”

The result is a love letter in reverse – tender but unsentimental, raw but reverent. In Brabazon’s lens, football becomes a vessel for something greater than glory. It becomes about the pursuit itself – the ritual, the resilience, the repetitions that shape who we are, even when no one’s watching.