Howard Bingham
[Photographer and pal to Muhammad Ali, b. 1939, Jackson, Mississippi, d. 2016, Marina del Rey, California.]
I have had the greatest of all blessings because my eye and my camera became the world’s window to this magnificent life.
At the fights, I don’t think I took the right pictures at the right moment. When he [Muhammad Ali] got hit pretty hard, I couldn’t just keep on taking pictures, because I felt for him. When he got hit, I got hit.
I went off on jobs, came back with underexposed film, blurred film, no film — and I always had an excuse for what went wrong.
(On his first newspaper job, 1962)
