I'm interested in any and all information you have on the subject of boxing photography! But a few of my questions... Who are the greatest boxing photographers? What are your favorite boxing photographs? Are there any online boxing archives specific to photography or otherwise books specific to the art of boxing and photography?
Probably the most well-known ‘boxing photographer’ was Howard Bingham, for his proximity to Muhammad Ali. He chronicled Ali, especially behind the scenes, for decades and never took a dime from Ali. He spent up to 100 days a year with him, year after year. Otherwise, I’m not sure there has been anyone who made a specialty of photographing boxing to the exclusion or near-exclusion of other sports or other subjects. Most fight photos were taken by staff photographers at newspapers and magazines (websites more recently) who were assigned to fights, or for wire services. There were probably a few at places like the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer who got the plum boxing assignments because they did it well, but they might be shooting a Jets or Eagles game on any random Sunday afternoon. And of course others shot freelance. The biggest collections would probably belong to The Ring, Sports Illustrated and, along with all their other subjects, Associated Press and UPI. EDIT: Add Getty Images to the list of largest collections and those from the biggest fights. I think they bought Sports Illustrated’s photo library some years ago.
The only one I'd ever known/interviewed was Tom Casino, who was a talented photographer. As someone whose been a long time photography hobbyist/enthusiast with occasional professional work over the years, and as much as I love boxing, I confess to knowing almost nothing about the subject.
IMO, easily, hands-down, the best photographer of boxing was Charles Hoff of the New York Daily News (1930s-'60s). His boxing photographs have been represented in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Santa Monica, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. I have a pretty good-sized book collection, and one of my most prized books (from the aspect of long-term enjoyment rather rather than any other measure of value) is The Fights featuring Hoff's boxing photographs and accompanying essays by A. J. Leibling, Jimmy Cannon, William Nack, James Baldwin, and Mark Kram. The book was published by Chronicle Books out of San Francisco in 1996. It's worth tracking down.
Neil Leifer's aerial view of Ali standing in a corner while Cleveland Williams is flat on the canvas must be one of the best.
Only photos where there was no logo on the canvas, the fighters wore plain trunks and boots and there were just ring lights rather than the pyrotechnic lighting that lights up the whole arena need apply imo.
Don’t know why I didn’t think of this as I was there just last month and saw some of these: On the IUPUI campus in Indianapolis the building where they have all their journalism/communications classes has a collection of sports photos — many of them were Sports Illustrated covers — and some of them are famous boxing photos. It’s not boxing exclusively but there are a few gems.
My friend from Counterpunch Media is a top notch boxing photographer and shoots mma as well. Greenbeanz photography in Wales is my friend. He loves live music and boxing and his work in both areas has been recognized.
I remembered this site as Eastside Boxing had a brilliant thread Classic Boxing Pictures. I found the thread but the photos no longer present, only the URL details. I checked a few and many were no longer available - mainly tinypic and those from Antekprizering which no longer operates. Anyway, you can copy the URLs and try them out - some photos were still available - obviously I only checked a few. Here’s the old thread:- [url]https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/classic-boxing-pictures.259646/[/url]
what is your source for this number, saintpat? it feels very low, because on almost every foto or film snippet of ali i have ever seen, i have spotted no person more often than howard. it looked like he was there 24/7 each and every year to me. what was his source of (financial) income? he could not have had a regular 9-to-5-job, because he was around the champ much too often. do you or does someone else here know more about bingham? one of this forum´s main drawbacks is that there is no way to upload or directly link fotos, so that pics are immediately visible in the thread. this feature is very common in other forums i visit, so technically it can´t be too difficult to do so. i wish the webmaster would do something about it.
