Walter Iooss Jr. American, b. 1943

Widely viewed as one of the greatest sports photographers of our time and called “the poet laureate of sports,” Walter Iooss Jr.’s (b. 1943) photographs have graced the pages of Sports Illustrated, including more than 300 covers, for 58 years. Since the age of 17, Iooss has photographed some of the most recognized athletes in sports history, including Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Mickey Mantle, Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Serena Williams, and Kobe Bryant. His ability to create beautiful backdrops for his subjects, in both action and portraiture, changed the definition of what a “good sports photograph” should be.

Born in Temple, Texas, to a family of avid sports fans, Iooss discovered photography at fifteen and began photographing professional football games. In just two years, he received his first assignment from Sports Illustrated and by twenty his works were featured on the covers. In the following decades Iooss has been celebrated for his stark representation of modern sporting culture, documenting some of the most famous moments in modern athletics, notably Michael Jordan’s gravity-defying slam dunk.

Iooss’ numerous acclaimed photography books and monographs detail the intimacies of lives revolving around sports and paint a picture of the human condition in exuberance, defeat, and peak physical performance. From a two-year project documenting American athletes in the 1984 Summer Olympics, to shooting every Super Bowl from 1967 to 2020, to a photo essay made with Michael Jordan titled Rare Air, Iooss’ lens transcended the celebrity of his subjects. In 1999 Iooss visited Havana, Cuba and through black-and-white and sun-soaked color images, illustrated the immediacy and dilapidation of life under Fidel Castro’s dictatorship. He froze in time the Cuban youth diving, fighting, and playing ball with two-by-fours and tape balls. Often intersecting photography and journalism, Iooss has established himself as not only a documentarian, but an artist.

In 2004 Iooss was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lucie Awards and was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 2018.