Biography
Neil Leifer is a filmmaker and former Sports Illustrated, Time and Life photographer
Neil Leifer's photography career has spanned 60 years, since becoming a professional while still in his teens. Beginning in 1960, his pictures regularly appeared in every major national magazine, including Time, Life, Newsweek, the Saturday Evening Post, Look, and, most often, Sports Illustrated.
Leifer became a staff photographer for Sports Illustrated in 1972; then for Time in 1978. In 1988 he was made a contributing photographer at Life magazine and spent the next two years dividing his time shooting for both Time and Life. When he left Time Inc. in 1990, his photographs had appeared on over 200 Sports Illustrated, Time, and People covers - at that point, the most ever published of one photographer's work in company history. He is the 2006 recipient of the prestigious Lucie Award for Achievement in Sports Photography. In 2008 he was honored for his outstanding contribution to Time Inc. journalism with The Britton Hadden Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, he became the very first photographer to be inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame.
Leifer has traveled all over the world on sports assignments. He has photographed 16 Olympic Games (7 winter and 9 summer), 4 FIFA World Cups, 15 Kentucky Derbies, countless World Series games, the first 12 Super Bowls, and almost every important boxing title fight since Ingemar Johansson beat Floyd Patterson in 1959. He photographed his favorite subject, Muhammad Ali, on almost 60 different occasions, covering all of his biggest fights and over 30 one-on-one studio sessions.
Neil is now a full-time filmmaker whose documentaries have appeared on HBO, ESPN, and PBS.
