Why Was Everyone Taking Pictures of Their TVs During the World Cup?

As anyone living in New York (or lesser state New Jersey) will tell you, the 2026 FIFA World Cup was chaos. Yet, for all the tourist mobs and cheers (and jeers) that rang out night after night, it was also remarkably buttoned-up. The world's most famous football heroes performed at the highest level despite the occasional shakeup. Unaffiliated brands were obscured. Quite literally millions of fans filtered through hosting stadiums with relatively little incident. The World Cup was a well-oiled machine.

Which is why the best view of the World Cup was also the least polished. Nothing beats the POV of people who weren't actually there.

A few canny folks made the view from their couch look quite cool, ticket prices be damned. Actually, the end result was so cool that it's become one of the defining looks of the World Cup's climactic finale.

On June 17, French winger Michael Olise cleared his feed to make room for blurry broadcast pictures taken by artist Lukas Korschan, making the Highsnobiety cover star perhaps the first to adopt the technique.

Over the next few weeks, a trend crystalized.

Photographer Florence Pernet later received credit for popularizing World Cup television broadcast screengrabs; she was soon tapped to provide social-media imagery for the official Portugal national football team. Other artists, including Hannah Coen, documented their own stylized shots of the World Cup as seen on their TVs, applying trained eyes to an approachable medium. The English team joined in. LOEWE, official partner to the World Cup-winning Spanish team, celebrated victory with, yes, photos from the TV.

But why?

Blame the establishment. These images reframe and freeze moments witnessed by us all — that is, the "us" who didn't attend the games because of price or effort. They're symbolic of the shared experience that is sport and the shared experience of watching sport on a screen.

It's also an artistic elevation of the ordinary. World Cup TV imagery breaks the barrier between subject and image-capturer. It betrays the distance separating them while centralizing their removed vantage point. It's the universal individual experience, pedestaled. As polished (and exclusionary) as the World Cup was, these photos succeed by being unvarnished (and inclusive).

The barrier to entry is your own eye.

A similar vibe is attained by likeminded photos of runway-show livestreams, wherein ordinary folks likely to be overlooked by luxury houses make the presentations their own.

You are the art director! You are the photographer! You decide upon the framing, the crop, the close-up. You put your own stamp on a premium product put forth by the powers that be, whether it's Louis Vuitton or FIFA. For once, you're in control.

Everyone loves a good leveling of the playing field.

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