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Neil Leifer is a filmmaker and former photographer for Sports Illustrated, Time, and Life.
His photography career has spanned six decades, beginning professionally in his teenage years. Starting in 1960, his images were regularly featured in major national magazines such as Time, Life, Newsweek, the Saturday Evening Post, Look, and most frequently, Sports Illustrated.
Leifer joined Sports Illustrated as a staff photographer in 1972 and later became a staff photographer for Time in 1978. In 1988, he was named a contributing photographer at Life magazine, splitting his time between Time and Life for the next two years. By the time he left Time Inc. in 1990, his work had appeared on more than 200 covers across Sports Illustrated, Time, and People magazines—setting a company record for the most covers by a single photographer. He received the prestigious Lucie Award for Achievement in Sports Photography in 2006 and in 2008 was honored with The Britton Hadden Lifetime Achievement Award for his significant contributions to Time Inc. journalism. In 2014, he became the first photographer inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame.
Leifer has traveled worldwide on sports assignments, covering 16 Olympic Games (7 winter, 9 summer), 4 FIFA World Cups, 15 Kentucky Derbies, numerous World Series games, the first 12 Super Bowls, and nearly every major boxing title fight since Ingemar Johansson defeated Floyd Patterson in 1959. He photographed his favorite subject, Muhammad Ali, nearly 60 times, documenting all of Ali’s major fights and over 30 studio sessions.
Currently, Neil Leifer works full-time as a filmmaker, with his documentaries airing on HBO, ESPN, and PBS.
