Sports through the Lens
Essays on 25 Iconic Photographs
Sarah K Fields editor Maureen M Smith editor Daniel A Nathan editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of Texas Press
Publishing:7th Jan '25
£35.00
This title is due to be published on 7th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
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. -- Alexander Wolff, former senior writer, Sports Illustrated, and author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure
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. -- Gerald Early, Washington University in St. Louis, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Boxing
ISBN: 9781477330098
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
264 pages