Relentless: The Stories behind the Photographs

by Neil Leifer

Overview

Neil Leifer is the best-known sports photographer of the past half century. Beginning in 1960, his pictures have regularly appeared in every major national magazine, including the Saturday Evening Post, Look, LIFE, Newsweek, and, most often, Sports Illustrated and Time, and his photographs have run on over two hundred Sports Illustrated, Time, and People covers. Leifer has photographed sixteen Olympic Games, fifteen Kentucky Derbies, countless World Series, the first twelve Super Bowls, four FIFA World Cups, and every important heavyweight title fight since Ingemar Johansson beat Floyd Patterson in 1959. He has photographed his favorite subject, Muhammad Ali, at thirty-five of his fights, including all the big ones.

Now, in Relentless, Leifer takes us behind the scenes of some fifty of his most iconic pictures. Starting with his shot of Baltimore Colt Alan Ameche scoring the game-winning touchdown against the New York Giants during sudden death overtime in the 1958 NFL Championship game at Yankee Stadium—taken on Leifer’s sixteenth birthday—he tells enthralling, often hilarious stories of getting to the right place at the right time to capture many of the legendary athletes of the twentieth century, including Mickey Mantle, Arthur Ashe, Willie Mays, Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Namath, and Arnold Palmer, as well as shooting presidential and celebrity portraits and covering a variety of subjects for Time. Recapping both an incredibly successful career and the transformation of photojournalism since the era of the great photo magazines, Relentless effectively chronicles fifty years of American popular culture..

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477309483
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	04/26/2016
Series:	Focus on American History Series
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.80(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Neil Leifer is a recipient of the prestigious Lucie Award for Achievement in Sports Photography and of the Britton Hadden Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to Time Inc. journalism. He is also the first photographer ever elected to a professional sports hall of fame, the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Leifer has published sixteen previous books, including nine collections of his sports photography. Currently he is a full-time filmmaker, producer, and director.

What People are Saying About This

Harry Benson

Neil was most definitely the best sports photographer of his generation.

Yogi Berra

Neil has taken some of the greatest photos you’ll ever see, even if you’ve seen them before.

John Skipper

Neil is relentless, irrepressible, and irresistible. He has invited me twice to join him at Rao’s, where he has treated me to a fabulous evening filled with wonderful food, wine, and sparkling conversation. At each, I have committed to a documentary, leading me to question who is treating whom. But, in the end, the treat is Neil and the great work he creates.

Jerry Seinfeld

Neil Leifer’s work is the quintessence of great sports photography. It makes you hold your breath for a split second, just as you do when you’re experiencing a great sports moment in real life.

Frank Deford

"Neil Leifer’s photographs chronicle sport as well as any journalist’s words. His photograph of Muhammad Ali standing over the fallen Sonny Liston is the most legendary sports photograph of the twentieth century."

David Hume Kennerly

If you mix together equal parts of persistence, exuberance, talent, chutzpah, tenacity, excellence, and generosity, you will discover the magic of Neil Leifer. I have known him for over forty years, and I don’t know anyone who is better at what he does, and who has more fun doing it, than Neil. I’m proud to have him as a friend and colleague.

Tom Brokaw

Chances are you have seen a photograph taken by Neil Leifer. After all, he’s been taking pictures around the world for more than forty years. But it’s not just his productivity that sets Neil apart and makes his work so memorable. It is his relentless pursuit of the larger meaning and the inner truth of his subjects that distinguishes his photography.

Bob Costas

If you are a sports fan, Neil Leifer’s pictures have been shaping your impressions and memories for five decades.

Editorial Reviews

In a social media world that imposes character limits, the power of the visual grows more important and perhaps no one in our sporting history has harnessed it so capably—and relentlessly—as Neil Leifer.

U.S. Sports History