I was working as a staff photographer for Stern magazine in Germany, and there was a rumour that Ali would fight a German, Karl Mildenberger. At that point he was not very well known in Europe – and I had never seen a boxing match in my life – but we had heard rumours that Ali was an extremely fantastic boxer and a very strange person. Stern magazine asked me and my wife – who was a reporter – to fly to meet him in London, where he had a fight with Brian London.
It was kind of awkward: Ali had just converted to Islam and was not supposed to talk to white women with nobody else present. That meant I was an important figure, there to make sure everything was decent. He was polite, but always busy, we couldn’t set the agenda. So we decided not to do the routine interviews, but simply be there, observing him. We spent days with him and sometimes half of the night going out with him and his buddies. And it turned out to be a good thing. After a day he got used to me, and I followed him as his shadow.
We would just walk the streets, and he was so outspoken and colourful. He loved children, and he had a little magic trick where he pulled candy out of their noses. He was constantly talking about how wonderful he was: “I’m the greatest!” And indeed he was.
He was so open when he found people, and talked to them – then suddenly he would have a mood swing, and would disappear back to his hotel. This is his secret: you can never figure him out. He was always a different person, and in his fights this was a mythical recipe. So time was of the essence: as long as we could stay around him, we had a chance to understand the man.
Ali was the ideal photo model because he did not interfere, or do any poses – he was his natural self. He wouldn’t do anything twice, so I had to be very alert. You would have one chance, and then he’d suddenly change again, and get very quiet or sleepy.
We went back to Hamburg and showed our material to our editors, and they said if you have another chance to go back, do it. So six months later we went to the US. It was even better – it was home turf, he knew everybody and everybody knew him. With this shot, he saw me during a little break between rounds in training, and he came out of the ring towards me, sticking his fist out into my camera – right fist, left fist, right fist, and then the bell rang to take him back. This was the only shot that was really sharp and well exposed, so it became the famous picture. But last year I went over my archive a little closer and saw there was another shot on the same strip, that was totally underexposed and scratched. The two shots make a very good juxtaposition – his right fist which is clear and visible, and his left fist in the dark. It really gives you a good idea of what was in him. This man had two different moods – he could be extremely friendly and funny, but he could also be a monster.
Once, we were in the car together in Chicago, and he asked his driver to stop and went to a bakery – we were surprised because he was on a strict diet of steak and water. Then we drove on and after an hour or so we came back to the same neighbourhood, and he got out again and went to the same bakery. This time I followed him and found out it was not so much about the doughnuts – he was more interested in the baker’s daughter. I got a very nice series of pictures of them in the bakery flirting. Many years later I visited him in his very plush villa – a little overdone, full of golden curtains and mirrors – and his new wife came into the room. It was the baker’s daughter.
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