Introduced by Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and former Golden Gloves boxer Richard Ford, The Fights is as rich in beauty as it is provocative in subject--a meditation on the soul of the boxer, and on the body as an instrument of violence and an inspiration for art. 50 photos.
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When a roster of writers includes Richard Ford, A. J. Liebling, James Baldwin, and Jimmy Cannon, it's hard to imagine that the words are only a preliminary to the stark, haunting black and white photography of Charles Hoff, whose lens chronicled boxing from the '30s through the '60s, but Hoff's images are, indeed, the book's main event. Like boxing itself, they are graceful, brutal, compelling and poignant, adding even deeper focus to the heavyweight essays that surround them.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Bad research spoils coffee table book,
By
This review is from: The Fights (Hardcover)
This book amounts to a wasted opportunity. Charles Hoff's photographs, shot between 1939 and 1959 on assignment for the New York Daily News, are the finest examples of their kind. But the job of identifying the fighters was botched. The man ID'd as Bo Bo (should be Bobo) Olson on p. 6 isn't Olson; the fighter isn't bald and has no tattoos. On p. 50, the fighter said to be Olson is obviously Jake La Motta. Willie Pep's name is misspelled, as is Dan Bucceroni's, and the photo on p. 12 which is said to be Rex Layne and Jersey Joe Walcott, isn't; Layne and Walcott fought only once, and (as you can see on p. 47), Layne wore white trunks that night. Besides, the date given on p. 12 is July 12, 1951, when Layne fought Rocky Marciano. The fighters on pp. 43 and 44 are not Ike Williams and Bob Montgomery, as the captions claim, but Jimmy Carter (in white trunks) and George Araujo. The boxer opposing Kid Gavilan on p. 46 is not Johnny Bratton, it's Johnny Saxton. The one landing on his seat on p. 51 is not Pat Marcune, it's Ray Famechon. Robert Villemain is the fighter opposing La Motta on p. 50... As for the essays, Richard Ford's introduction is odd: he brags that at age 48 he beat up a neighbor, and he confesses that as a boy he "bent over and kissed another boy's bare butt for the express purpose of keeping him from hitting me." Yet the selection that follows is good: two by Jimmy Cannon (on Rocky Graziano and Tony Zale), and one each by William Nack (on Sonny Liston), James Baldwin (on Liston and Floyd Patterson, a good choice not reprinted elsewhere), Mark Kram (on Muhammad Ali), and A. J. Liebling. More appropriate pieces to accompany the photos might have been made, but the chosen ones are all good (although having two by Jimmy Cannon and none by W. C. Heinz makes no sense). The mistakes are a shame, because this could have been a classic.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual skills from a time gone,
By John Butler-Wood (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Fights (Hardcover)
Hoff's skill as a photographer is shown plainly throughout this book. He was known for using very little film, which increases an objective appreciation of his skill; he understood boxing and could anticipate moments of significance and arrange them to create technically superb photographs, without making dozens of pictures. The boxers depicted in this volume are now historical figures, but so are these photographers, of which Hoff is perhaps the best example. Live television coverage has changed the nature of boxing photography irrecoverably since the days when Hoff was photographing the sport. This volume is important as a historical document, then, from two angles - firstly as a record of what many perceive as the golden age of boxing, but also as an archive of amazing photography skills which are now impossible for photographers to learn, let alone master. A must for fans of both serious photography and boxing. J B-W
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