Walter iooss most famous picture
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If you are an avid reader of Sports Illustrated, you may be familiar with the work of Walter Iooss. His photos of athletes and swimsuit models are recognized around the world.
Walter Iooss Educational Background
By the time Walter Iooss graduated from East Orange High School in New Jersey, he was already shooting pictures of athletes. His early inspiration came from veteran Sports Illustrated photographers John Zimmerman, Hy Peskin and Mark Kaufman. During this time, Iooss had some formal training at the Germain School of Photography in New York City.
Walter Iooss: The Athletic Photo Career
Walter Iooss knew exactly where he wanted his career to go. He constantly hounded the office of Sports Illustrated with his work. When he finally received his first assignment from the magazine, it was an historic one. Iooss happened to be on assignment at Yankee Stadium in 1961 when Roger Maris beat Babe Ruth’s home run record with the iconic 61 runs.
After two years of hard work, Walter Iooss finally achieved masthead status of Sports Illustrated. He was only 20-years-old when he got his
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Bates College
Walter Iooss (American, 1943)
A highly influential sports photographer, Walter Iooss Jr.’s images transcend the fame of his subjects, showing the trust they feel with the photographer. Born to a family of sports fans in Texas, Iooss discovered photography aged 15. At 17, he got his first assignment for Sports Illustrated, and by 20, he was shooting magazine’s covers. Today Iooss’s images have appeared on over 300 covers of Sports Illustrated, including of athletes like Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Pele, Cristiano Ronaldo, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams. He also photographed the first 52 Super Bowls, created a New York Times bestselling photo essay with Michael Jordan, and shot campaigns for Nike and Adidas. Before his prolific career in sports photography, from 1968 through 1972, Iooss was an in-house photographer for Atlantic Records in New York where he photographed many rock-and-roll stars.
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Photographer Walter Iooss (YOHSS) once described himself as "consumed by sports and form." Pursuing these twin passions, Iooss has become, according to Steve Fine, Sports Illustrated’s director of photography, “an artist who is quite possibly the best sports photographer ever.”
We've created a puzzle of one of Iooss's photographs that appeared in "And Something Magical Happened": Baseball Photographs by Walter Iooss. Visit the virtual exhibition to learn more about Iooss and his oeuvre, and read on below for Curator Andi McKenzie's description of the image.
Click here to see the entire photograph.
“The beauty of the game is seen when you’re a child—when the ball is thrown to you, nothing else exists in the world.” -Walter Iooss
With his eye for composition and gift for drawing out the emotions of the viewer, Walter Iooss effortlessly blurs the divide between fine art and sports photography. Here, Iooss draws upon his own nostalgia for the street-corner games he played as a child.
Iooss relates the story behind this photograph
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