Lew Alcindor, basketball player, 61st Street and Amsterdam Avenue, New York, May 2, 1963

Richard Avedon was one of the world’s most famous fashion and art photographers from the late 1940s into the 21st century. During the early 1960s, he traveled through the southern United States photographing participants in the American Civil Rights Movement. He took pictures of African American leaders such as Malcolm X, and movement opponents like George Wallace, governor of Alabama, for a book he called Nothing Personal, a collaboration with James Baldwin, the novelist, playwright, poet, and civil rights activist.

Avedon’s photographs often present political or ethical positions. And, despite opposition from others in the fashion business, Avedon chose and photographed the first non-white model, China Machado, to appear in a fashion magazine. He later championed Donyale Lewis as the first black super model.

Lew Alcindor, already known to sports insiders when Avedon shot this picture, finished his high school career with 79 wins and only two losses. An A-student, he also studied black history and learned about his own family’s African heritage. In 1971, Alcindor converted to Islam and changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

By the time he retired from professional basketball in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA’s leading scorer and winner of six championships. His accomplishments on the court are legendary.

Abdul-Jabbar is also an educator and best-selling author. He has written many books about black history, including On the Shoulder of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance, co-authored with Raymond Obstfeld, and Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes, with Anthony Walton.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was among the famous people Avedon photographed for the book Nothing Personal, on which he collaborated with writer and activist James Baldwin.
 

 
This photo shows Lew Alcindor in action as a player for University of California, Los Angeles, in 1967.
 

What words would you use to describe Lew Alcindor, a high school basketball player when this photograph was made in 1963? What do you see in the picture that brings those words to mind? This now-famous picture by world-famous photographer Richard Avedon has been interpreted in many different ways by art critics and others.

Does the knowledge that the photograph was taken by a famous fashion photographer change how you describe it? If so, in what ways? Though photographed in 1963, the picture first appeared in a fashion magazine filled with other photos by Avedon in 1965. In what ways is Avedon’s picture of Lew Alcindor like images of fashion models?

Avedon posed the young Alcindor on a basketball court in an urban environment. The photograph’s title locates the scene at 61st Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York, then the address to Alcindor’s high school, Power Memorial Academy. How does Avedon’s decision to set the portrait in this urban environment influence the way you interpret or think about the photograph?
 

In his portraits Avedon wanted to capture something about each person that he or she was not trying to show. This portrait of actress Marilyn Monroe is famous because it shows her when she had stopped posing for the camera.
 

 
Avedon’s photograph of Lew Alcindor appeared in this spread in the April 1965 issue of Harper’s Bazaar
 

Since ancient times, artists have represented athletes as extraordinary. The pose of this ancient spear thrower was innovative in its day for showing the body at rest and in motion at the same time.
 
 
Think about the various places you see sports images every day. What makes a sports image a work of art? Many photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries have captured the drama of sports and created iconic images of sports superstars.

Photographer Richard Avedon made artistic choices to emphasize that Lew Alcindor was not an ordinary high school student. He positioned his camera well below the tall, athletic Alcindor to emphasize his height. By posing Alcindor palming the basketball (a difficult feat for most people), and with his right knee bent and his right arm extended, he showed off the extraordinary length and muscularity of the young man’s arms and legs. He is self-confident. He dominates the court. He appears almost super-human.

According to a Newsweek magazine feature on Avedon in 1993, the photographer was taking a cab down the west side of Manhattan and spotted Alcindor in the schoolyard. As the story goes, it was only after photographing Alcindor that Avedon learned that sports insiders had already discovered the phenom. The photograph, however, suggests he was fully aware of the Power Memorial Academy student’s superstar status.

The photograph first appeared in print nearly two years later, in the April 1965 “What’s Happening” issue of the fashion and style magazine Harper’s Bazaar. The entire issue featured photographs by Avedon; Lew Alcindor was pictured and heralded as “what’s about to happen in basketball.” In fact, however, he was already “happening”—in his senior year, Alcindor averaged 33 points per game, and led his team to win the New York City Catholic High School championship.
 

This detail of Alcindor’s expression reveals his self-confidence. During his sophomore year when the photo was taken, he averaged 19 points per game, leading Power Memorial’s team to 27 straight victories. He was also an A-student.

 

 
Lew Alcindor, better known today as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, kept the number 33 throughout his career.