The first time photographer Richard Corman met Muhammad Ali, the boxer was throwing punches at him. “He was joking of course,” says Corman over coffee in New York City as he recalls his first photo shoot with the legendary boxer, whom he photographed in 1998 at the famous Industria studios in New York. Corman recalls, “I was a nervous wreck because I didn’t know what to expect.” Luckily, the larger-than-life boxer had a great way of making people feel at ease, as he joked with people on set and even performed magic tricks. Corman, at that point an already established portrait photographer who had studied under Richard Avedon and had photographed Madonna, says that nothing could have prepared him for meeting one of his childhood heroes.
“I was set up in Industria’s biggest studios, Studio 3, I’ll never forget it…and there was a ramp that a car could drive up, so he drove up in his own limousine right to the front door of my studio,” recalls Corman, seemingly still in awe of the encounter almost two decades later. “He got out of the car and the first thing he did as I was about to shake his hand was swing punches at me. What he was really doing was putting everyone at ease. There was really a sense of humor. Immediately, I could tell that this was going to be a good day.”
Ali was in his mid-50s, already an American icon and had been suffering the effects of Parkinson’s disease for several years. Corman remembers how fragile the boxer seemed at times during the shoot, “Maybe the first thing I noticed is when we turned the lights on, because we were working with strobes, because of the medication and the Parkinson’s, his eyes were very sensitive. So he would have to close his eyes for a period of time.” However, Corman, says that didn’t seem to stop the fighter from “bringing his A-game.” Despite the boxer’s illness, Corman says they were able to make images that were “warm, strong, heroic and had a sense of humor.” Corman estimates he spent about an hour in the studio with Ali, and recalls that it was an “intense” hour. Using a Hasselblad 500C with a 150mm portrait lens, he focused mainly on tight shots of the boxer’s face, but also on the boxer’s hands, which Corman describes as very “beautiful, large, long and expressive.”
But it was really what Corman was able to see behind Ali’s eyes that meant everything to him, he says. “The photographs that I respond to are the ones where you can see the story behind someone’s eyes, and that was the hope here,” says Corman. Corman’s photography style was heavily influenced by his early mentor, father of modern fashion and portrait photography, Richard Avedon. Shooting on a traditional classic gray background, Corman wanted to isolate and focus on the intensity of the boxer’s eyes. “In some ways, it was reminiscent of [Avedon’s] style.”
It was his apprenticeship at the Avedon studio that Corman credits for ultimately opening doors for him to achieve such high level of access to subjects for portraits. With no formal education in photography, Corman says that “photography sort of found me.” After seeing an Avedon fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he was inspired and thought, “If I could work with someone like him, it would change my whole life.” Corman was in luck. After having put in some time apprenticing with various photographers, he found himself at a still-life studio where the studio director happened to mention that Avedon’s studio was seeking an assistant that very same day. Corman didn’t miss a beat, going to the studio and landing an interview with Avedon that evening. The interview was very casual, with Avedon interviewing Corman as the legendary photographer shaved and got ready to attend the theater that night. Corman started the very next day.
Who could have predicted that Corman would one day go on to photograph some of the most iconic people in history? Although Ali was one of his favorites, Corman says his shoot with Nelson Mandela in South Africa is one that also changed his life.
In 2000, Corman was asked to fly to Cape Town to photograph Mandela as he re-visited the jail cell where he had spent 17 years. “It was breathtaking,” says Corman of the experience. “I was only given 10 minutes to shoot,” he recalls, “I hear the footsteps coming down the hallway and they echo in a prison, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.” Corman says he was taken aback by Mandela’s incredible humility, who greeted the photographer saying “It’s my honor.” Corman used a Rolleiflex F3.5 for the shoot, wanting to create an intimate focus on the intensity of Mandela’s spirit, and also wanting to transcend and not focus on the bars of the prison walls they were shooting in. When Corman asked Mandela if it was difficult to come back to the place where he spent so many years behind bars, Mandela said, “It makes me happy.” Corman explains, “because he got past it in order to affect change, he was a visionary.”
In the fall, Richard has a book coming out on yet another visionary he had the opportunity to photograph – one who he says “changed the course of pop culture forever”- Madonna. Having recently released previously unseen Polaroids of the pop star, the portraits show a relaxed and pre-super stardom Madonna Louise Ciccone in her apartment in New York City’s lower east side in the 80s. The photos remained unpublished for around 30 years. The young star made quite an impression on Corman, as he explains, “I was then and I remain mesmerized by her fierce, fierce determination. This woman worked so hard. I asked her what her goals were, she said, ‘To change the world.’ And I believed her.”
Despite his work having garnered international attention and commercial success, Corman has never forgotten where it all started. “I scrubbed toilets for six months at Avedon’s studio before I was ever allowed on a shoot.” Even so, he was always shooting on his own, he tells me as he blissfully remembers the days he would wake up at dawn just to photograph the light falling on buildings in the Meatpacking District, explaining, “I wanted to create a vision of my own.” Indeed, he has come a long way from those days, and his portraits have appeared in publications all over the world, including Time, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone among others. Corman takes it all in stride explaining, “I’ve been very fortunate, at the end of the day, I’m a storyteller, this is what I do.”
To see more of Richard Corman’s work visit his website at: www.richardcorman.com
Instagram: @richardcorman
Tumblr: @richardcormanstudio
