Sports Show: Athletics as Image and Spectacle

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Sporting events as spectacle. Athletes as cultural icons. It was not always so, and The Sports Show reveals in a dramatic way how photography and film and new media transformed age-old leisure activities into the pop culture phenomena of sports in our day. Innovative early photographers and filmmakers were fundamental to this transformation, producing powerful images that put millions of people at the center of the athletic action.

Reviews

"David E. Littles The Sports Show, a collection of candids, portraits and action scenes, brings us face to face with the anonymous amateurs and world-famous figures from across the past century. The most intimate images may be those of boxing matches, studies in poise and pain. Here are stars- Louis, Graziano, Patterson, Ali- but also many so little remembered as to be unidentifiable. In one picture from the 40s, a KOd boxer hits the canvas while the cameras saucer-like flash-reflector looms above, a conspicuous indicator of the photographers- and fans - always watching." The Wall StreetJournal

Author Bio

David E. Little is curator and head of the Department of Photography and New Media at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.