So much sporting action lives on in the photographs that capture them. More than the written word, it is the image that gives an event or a personality a kind of immortality. The moment might not have a bearing on victory or defeat, but there’s something telling about it.
Do you remember the famous finish of the tied Test in Brisbane? Or Muhammad Ali standing over a prone Sonny Liston, the angle of the photograph exaggerating the relationship between victor and vanquished? Or Bobby Moore embracing Pele after their World Cup match in 1970? I have seen these and other images so often that there is a part of me which believes I was present at all these occasions.
In their 50th anniversary book, Sports Illustrated (founded in 1954) carried some of their own famous and favourite images: Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute barrier in the mile, Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their Black Salute at the ’68 Olympics, Michael Jordan’s slam dunk in an NBA game, a close-up of Evander Holyfield’s ear bitten off by Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods teeing off at the Masters, and more.
Some years ago, our newspapers and magazines often used images large — they genuinely told a story (“ a picture is worth a thousand words” is the cliché). But increasingly the image has had to make way for more text or more advertisements or more something else. Excellent photographs badly used are the same as bad photographs used badly! We tend to use images on the sports pages the same way we use pictures of politicians lined up or cutting ribbons or shaking hands. But sport is about action, and raising a bat after a century doesn’t quite cut it.
One for the album: The match between Brazil and England in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico is one of the most talked about encounters in the history of the competition. The presence of such great players as Pele and Bobby Moore (exchanging jerseys) added a touch of class. | Photo Credit: THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
It is difficult to pinpoint what makes a great sports photograph. We know it when we see it. We want the memorable image: action, portrait, comedy, news, emotion, chaos, unexpected order. The list is long. But can a photographer plan for it? I doubt it. You have to be there when it happens in that split second. You need patience and luck, a good eye. And an instinct like a slip fielder.
Occasionally you can have a happy accident. At the 1968 Olympics, Bob Beamon’s 8.9m ‘Leap of the Century’, was taken by an amateur photographer who realised only in the dark room that he had taken such a picture. Three years later, he quit his job as an accountant and founded the Allsport agency which he sold later for 29 million pounds. Some accident that!
Sometimes you don’t even need a moment of action. Mithali Raj sitting in the dressing room reading Rumi before going out to bat captures the person in greater detail than some of her pictures on the field of play.
“A photograph should be like a Cartier-Bresson moment, something you observed, not a reaction between the subject and photographer,” the great cricket photographer Patrick Eagar once said. Just as only accidental memory makes for art, only spontaneity makes for great photographs.
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