Lori Grinker: “Just being a part of people’s lives so outside of my own and being able to photograph them, that’s what hooked me on journalism and documentary photography.”

Lori Grinker: “Just being a part of people’s lives so outside of my own and being able to photograph them, that’s what hooked me on journalism and documentary photography. The privilege of being invited into people’s lives to document it.”

By Chris Akers                                             
            
Boxing is the one sport that has always attracted the arts more than any other. From famous writers like Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates to movies about the sport being amongst the best films that Hollywood has ever offered, the lives of boxers and the sport’s inner workings have been the inspiration for several artistic depictions.

Lori Grinker’s recently released book Mike Tyson: 1981-1991 is a collection of photographs taken of Tyson from 1981 to 1991, covering the period from when he started learning his craft in the Catskills with Cus D’Amato to just before his prison conviction in the early 1990s.

Grinker’s interest in photography was from a young age and she had several influences to draw on at that time.

“My cousin’s best friend was a photographer,” says Grinker via Zoom. “He used to go out during the day and come back with these black and white photographs that really intrigued me. My father would make funny pictures with a polaroid.

“I was painting and drawing and wanted to be an artist. Went to a little art college first, took photography and I just loved being in the dark room.  And then I switched to Parsons School of Design, and I was going to do communication design, maybe illustration. But I was also taking photography and then I took this one photojournalism class. We had to find a story and try to get it published, and that’s how I found the young boxers.”

Admitting that she knew nothing about boxing beforehand, Grinker explains how it was through a photojournalism class she was taking that she was offered the opportunity to take photos at the Catskills.

“So I was in this photojournalism class, and we were learning how to shoot with a camera, and how to use a flash. So it was more technical at the beginning of the semester. Then we had to find a story to do and try and get it published. I was photographing for the school some guests at a seminar. One was on filmmakers and filmmaking and then they did one of Muhammad Ali and they asked if I would take pictures for it and I said ‘Sure, that sounds interesting.’

“One of the guests was Jim Jacobs, who owned the big fight film archive library, and he was partners with Bill Cayton, and they supported this house in Catskills, New York. He was talking about that, and the kids up there trained by Cus, and I thought ‘That could be a really good story for my class. Could I come up?’ And he spoke to Cus and they said yes. So I started going up some weekends.”

When she first arrived at the Catskills, it was the lives of two younger fighters that initially caught her interest. And neither of them was Mike Tyson.

“It was Nadia Hujtyn and Billy Hamm. She was female, so that was interesting to me, and she was at the gym working out just like these various young guys, and Billy Hamm who was tiny and nine years old. So I started photographing them separately. She was a Mormon, and she had a pet rat, so I thought it was a good story. And then Billy Hahn lived in a trailer with his parents. On weekends he would stay at the house, so I got to go to the trailer where they lived and photograph his family.

“Then it became more about Billy, as I was trying to sell it which was part of the assignment. People weren’t that interested in a female boxer then. Billy was going with the kids in the group to boxing matches and different clubs around the upstate New York area. I started going with them and of course, Mike was one of them.

“Then Cus kept saying to me “Why don’t you focus on Mike? He’s going to be the next heavyweight champion,” and he looks normal to me. He looked like a boxer. I was interested in the two that were more anomalies. Slowly as he started to turn pro, Jim Jacobs asked if I would take some pictures for them and that’s how that started.”

Tyson according to Grinker “was pretty shy,” when he was first photographed.

“It was Cus and all these other kids, so I was not focused on Mike at that time. But then when Cus died, I wanted to photograph at the funeral and Jim said I could, and I went to the funeral. Mike didn’t want to be photographed and Jim explained to him that this was part of it. So he said OK, and I started photographing that. Then he was turning pro, and I got to do one fight early on. The stuff I would do on the side I would do in my own time. But of course, I always had to get permission from Cus or Steve Lott. But I photographed that first heavyweight championship. That was pretty incredible.

“It was a lot of back and forth once I started working for magazines and I would come up with writers or just be doing portraits or something arranged through Jim Jacobs or Steve. But then when I was doing any work for the big fights, it was more as been part of that family. So it was Kevin Rooney and Steve Lott and Jim and other people that were around. So I was sort of part of it but there was always a little on the outside as they were all together all the time and I would go back and forth. Even though with my book it looks like I was there constantly, I wasn’t. I was travelling around the country working on another book. I was travelling around the world working on other projects. When I popped in it was friendly, but it wasn’t like we chatted on the phone. “

Although D’Amato was pushing Mike, “as they all had this idea Mike would be the next heavyweight champion,” there were other fighters that they managed and who visited the Catskills. Being there also gave Grinker a chance to witness the togetherness the boys in the house had.

“So, Wilfred Benitez would be there sometimes, and I photographed him. Some of the other older kids, I didn’t really photograph them after that initial part. It was more Mike in training, sparring partners. It was really nice in the way the boys took care of things in the house. Camille ran the house and they had to do their chores. So there was definitely a camaraderie between all of them.”

It was not just those in the gym who were fascinated with Tyson but the wider community.

“You’d be at the gym there and as Mike was turning pro, of course, the whole community would come, and some of Cus’ family members. His brother was there a lot. The gym was very small and in the police station and people would always be there watching. So it was a whole community thing.”

The last five years that the book covers, 1986 to 1991, were when the cultural impact of Tyson was truly developed. In an age where social media and the speed of communication mean that communication is almost instantaneous, it is hard to describe to people how embedded Tyson was in the public consciousness and how quickly stories about him broke on the major news outlets, not just for his exploits in the ring, but for his life and the start of his decline outside it. Was Grinker aware of this when she was photographing him?

“I don’t think I was aware culturally. I don’t think I was aware of what I had until I started putting together the book because I was there and then I wouldn’t be there for a long time. There were a lot of fights I never photographed. Ages I never saw him as I was working on other things. But I definitely did see his rise and that was very clear. Suddenly he had girlfriends like Beverly Johnson and Naomi Campbell, all this money and he started getting his clothing made and started wearing gold medallions and gold watches, driving a Rolls Royce and driving to Catskills. He was the local hero.

“He was sharing an apartment with Steve Lott in the city and Jim Jacobs lived in the same building. You saw everything changing. After a fight in Vegas, he’d be with all these people and all the celebrities would be at the fights. I never happened to go to any parties with him after the fight. That was the one thing he would never let me do. You could see things started to change. Robin Givens came in and her mother, and you could see her mother maybe planning things.

“Cus died and that changed a lot and then Jim died. He wasn’t going to stay with Jim’s partner Bill Cayton and that’s when other people started trying to get their hands on him.

“He once told me he would never go with Don King but of course he did. But then after he lost (to Buster Douglas) I wasn’t really there anymore because I was working on another book project, and I was travelling all over the world. My intention wasn’t to spend my life photographing Mike Tyson. It just happened that I was there. I was working for Ring Magazine, I was working for the big fights, so I just had that access.

“You could really see things start to fall apart with Robin and the marriage and her mother. It went downhill and it was really sad to see that.”

Grinker explains why, a few decades later, she decided to create and publish this portfolio of photos of one of the most recognisable athletes in history.

“I wanted to do a book for a while. I thought about it in the back of my head. Mike was doing this one-man show on Broadway with Spike Lee and Mike’s wife called me to say that Spike Lee wanted to use some of my pictures. So I was going through everything for them. Then I told them about the book and they introduced me to their agent, and that’s how it happened.”

The few times Grinker photographed boxing outside the sphere of Tyson were memorable experiences for her, especially when she photographed a major fight in Las Vegas for the first time.

“First fight in Vegas was a real eye-opener for me because there were no other females photographing and I had no idea what to expect. I wasn’t a sports photographer. I’d been photographing sparring, but just been around the ring with so many other photographers, squished in together. You could barely lift your elbows up to get your camera up to change your film. It was just electrifying.

“The big magazines would have people on either side of the ring and they’d have remote cameras above, which somebody helped me rig up once. It was a whole world that I would never have expected to be a part of.”

Although she did other assignments involving boxers, such as one for Sports Illustrated involving Roberto Duran, Grinker was more interested in documenting people’s lives.

“For me, boxing, and in the Catskills especially, was about these kids and where they came from, how boxing helped them. It wasn’t about photographing the boxing sport; it was more a cultural thing.

“I did a book on war while I was doing that. I did a book on Jewish women in America to try to break some stereotypes. So I was more into feature photography long-term and documentary projects but not sports.”

Boxing did help Grinker in many ways when it came to her other projects, finding connections between boxers and other people she photographed.

“I was doing this project on Jewish women in America to try and understand my own culture. They taught me a lot and they were very intimate portraits, and I was photographing their lives the same way as the boxers.

And then when I started doing the war project it was the same thing. Getting involved in people’s lives in a very intimate way, as a lot of them were wounded or had all kinds of problems and they would open up their lives and their families to me. I’d spend time photographing them and that was natural to me. But I think what a connection was, especially with boxing and with the war was the brutality of it. “

Boxing and war have several similarities. As mentioned, the brutality the two share, but also the camaraderie and understanding of your enemy sometimes after a battle. The intense and violent shared experience of people involved in both also connects them. Yet overall, what interests Grinker is people’s lives and the documentation of them.

“Just being a part of people’s lives so outside of my own and being able to photograph them, that’s what hooked me on journalism and documentary photography. The privilege of being invited into people’s lives to document it.”