Sports through the Lens
Essays on 25 Iconic Photographs
The stories behind and legacies of important sports photos from the last 130 years.
Ever since photography and professional sports originated in the nineteenth century, photographers have shaped how we perceive sports. Sports through the Lens collects essays by twenty-five historians that consider what it means to capture and revisit a moment of cultural significance in sports, looking at each photo’s creation, its contexts, and how its meaning has shifted over time. Some essays provide fresh perspectives on such iconic images as Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston at their 1965 rematch and Michael Jordan soaring at the 1988 NBA All-Star Game slam dunk competition; others introduce readers to the lesser-known stories of the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon or the inaugural World Indigenous Games. The authors examine the photos' legacies alongside the artistry of both the athletes and the photographers. Reflecting on images of athletes from around the world engaged in sports from baseball to horse-racing to hockey, Sports through the Lens provides a wide-ranging meditation on the visual, historical, and cultural meaning of sports photographs.
Thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening. I happily followed the writer wherever he or she led me—to the mechanics of taking the photo, or the context of the moment, or the artistic or compositional aspects of the picture. I consumed these varied, accessible essays in gulps, one or two at a time, with the afterimage of each captured moment burned on to my brainpan long after I’d set the book down.
Sports through the Lens is elegant in its simplicity of concept: Have various sports scholars each select a compelling sports photograph—iconic or obscure, from any sport, their choice—and write a short essay about its origin and impact. The result is a wonderful collection that is informative, accessible to the general reader, and engagingly written. Here is that rare anthology that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
Maureen M. Smith is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, Sacramento and the co-author of (Re)Presenting Wilma Rudolph.
Daniel A. Nathan is a professor of American studies at Skidmore College and the author of Saying It’s So.
Sarah K. Fields is a professor of communication at the University of Colorado Denver and the author of Game Faces: Sport Celebrity and the Laws of Reputation and Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America.
- Introduction
- 1. The Making of a Non-Iconic Sports Photograph: John Hemment’s Salvator v. Tenny (Jonathan Finn)
- 2. The Slide: Ty Cobb Steals Third (Neil McCabe)
- 3. The Long Count: Dempsey and Tunney (Elliott J. Gorn)
- 4. “Some Are Easy and Some Are Tough--That’s All There Is to It”: Nickolas Muray’s Portrait of Babe Ruth (Edmund F. Wehrle)
- 5. Woman in White with an Outstretched Arm: Helene Mayer, 1936 (Allen Guttmann)
- 6. The Odd Couple: Althea Gibson and Alice Marble, Forest Hills, 1950 (Ashley Brown)
- 7. Willie Mays and the Catch Heard \`Round the World (George Gmelch and Howard De Nike)
- 8. Jackie Robinson: Safe at Home (Maureen M. Smith)
- 9. Alan Ameche from the One: The 1958 NFL Championship Game (Daniel A. Nathan)
- 10. The Moment of Truth: Ali-Liston II (Carlo Rotella)
- 11. When Push Came to Shove: Kathrine Switzer, Jock Semple, and the Boston Marathon (Susan Ware)
- 12. Perched Valor: The Black Power Photograph That Exposed Injustice and Transformed Generations (Terry Anne Scott)
- 13. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Broadway Joe: Joe Namath in Fort Lauderdale, 1969 (Travis Vogan)
- 14. Secretariat at the Belmont (Jonathan Silverman)
- 15. “Henderson Has Scored for Canada”: Photographing Canadian Nationalism (Russell Field)
- 16. U.S. vs. Them: American Nationalism and Sports Illustrated’s Famous Cover Image of The Miracle on Ice (Chris Elzey)
- 17. Time Stamping Centre Court: Borg at Wimbledon (Michael Butterworth)
- 18. The Art of Fernando Valenzuela: Baseball and Chicanx Culture in California (Bernardo Ramirez Rios)
- 19. Michael Jordan at the 1988 Slam Dunk Contest: Liftoff for the NBA and Nike in the New Gilded Age (Sean Dinces)
- 20. Sovereign Celebration: Cathy Freeman, 1994 (Matthew Klugman and Gary Osmond)
- 21. Moment of Victory: Brandi Chastain and the 1999 World Cup (Sarah K. Fields)
- 22. Play Ball: Mo’ne Davis and the Visualization of Athletic Girlhood in Sports Illustrated (Samantha White)
- 23. To Dream Again: The Founding of NIFA and the First World Indigenous Women’s Soccer Champions (Christine O’Bonsawin)
- 24. Kaepernick’s Cliché (Timothy B. Spears)
- 25. The Hug: Finding A Community’s Future on the Pitch (Amy Bass)
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Index
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