São Paulo born and based photographer Caio Vilela works as a freelancer photoreporter and writer for many prominent brazillian and foreign media vehicles since 1994, mostly on road assignments focused in culture, environment, travel, food, arts and architecture, with a special eye for street football.
In 2003, Football Without Borders project was born when the idea of start shooting street football sparked after a photo – showing a group of school kids playing next to iconic architecture of iranian desert town Yazd – was published in former Brazillian Airlines inflight mag (inserir foto).
Being often on the road, the photographer decided to keep an eye open for football kids in different locations.
Along the next decade (and still ongoing!), finding such kids and their improvised fields became a late afternoon objective everywhere for the photographer. Alleys, beaches, schools, forests, deserts, urbanscapes, snowfields, historical sites and any odd locations along the way are portrayed, as well as each continent’s regional ethnic groups, whenever there is football around.
More than 15 years later from that day in Yazd, FWB has now images produced in little over a 100 countries in all continents, including Antarctica, all 27 brazillian states, 22 regions of Russia, and are published in six books, national and international media vehicles, and shown in over 30 photo exhibitions in São Paulo, Rio, Paris, Bogota, Belgrad, Doha, Quito, Islamabad, Bologna, Zingst (Germany) and Saransk (Russia).
A still growing photography collection, FWB project shows the heartful visual poetry of spontaneous football taking up public spaces, where the real football lies on the feet and hearts of anonymous kids shining on their own ground, away from stadiums and spotlights.
The project grows as sponsors show interest in kicking the ball forward. For sponsoring an upcoming chapter, please check the latest updates directly with the author and follow @futebolsemfronteiras on Instagram and Facebook.

IMAGE BANK

Our image bank includes more than 20 thousand catalogued images available to be licensed, including varied published and unpublished pictures of street football and school life taken in over 105 countries, all 27 brazillian states, 22 regions of Russia and Antarctica.