"Muhammad Ali: The Birth of a Legend, Miami, 1961-1964 Photographs by Flip Schulke Photographs by Flip Schulke"
2000-10-26 until 2000-12-17
Photofusion Photography Centre
London, , UK United Kingdom

In September 1960, Cassius Clay, a young boxer from Louisville, Kentucky, won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Rome and within four years would defeat Sonny Liston to become the world heavyweight champion. At this point he converted to Islam and took the name Muhammad Ali. Although Ali was famous by this time not much is known about his early years when, after the Olympics, he moved to Miami to train with the celebrated Angelo Dundee.

It was there that he honed his boxing as well as his self-promotional skills and embarked on a career that would lead him to the pinnacle of athletics as a boxer and social icon. It was during these early days in Miami that Flip Schulke, photographing for Life and Sports Illustrated magazines, captured the young Cassius Clay on camera. Flip Schulke has been one of America's premier photojournalists for more than forty-five years and has won dozens of national photojournalism awards. Through his close friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he became best known as one of the leading chroniclers of the civil rights movement and covered nearly every major civil rights story in the South from the 1950's until Dr. King's assassination in 1968. He holds the largest independent collection of civil rights photographs in the world, a selection of which will also be featured.

This exhibition is programmed to coincide with Black History Month.

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