Howard Bingham

Howard L. Bingham was born on the twenty-ninth of May 1939 at Jackson, Mississippi, the son of Willie Bingham — a Baptist minister of the principal post-Great-Migration Mississippi-Black community — and Loretta Bingham. He was raised at the family relocation to Los Angeles, California in 1948 in the principal post-Second-World-War Los Angeles Black community of Compton.

He enrolled at Compton College at Compton, California in 1957 and studied photojournalism under the principal Compton College photojournalism programme — and was hired in 1961 as a junior staff photographer at the principal Los Angeles Sentinel — the principal Black weekly newspaper of post-1933 Los Angeles.

He was assigned by the Sentinel in February 1962 to photograph the principal heavyweight boxing contender Cassius Clay at the Los Angeles boxing card at the Olympic Auditorium — and began on the day of the assignment the principal lifelong personal photographic relationship with the boxer.

He was the principal personal photographer of Muhammad Ali from 1962 to Ali's death on the third of June 2016 — across fifty-four years. He produced across the period approximately one million surviving negatives and digital images of Ali — the principal photographic archive of the principal twentieth-century American athlete.

The principal Bingham-Ali photographic archive documents the principal phases of Ali's career — the principal first heavyweight championship of February 1964 at Miami, the principal Nation of Islam membership of the post-1964 period, the principal Vietnam-conscientious-objector period of 1967 through 1970, the principal Foreman 'Rumble in the Jungle' victory of October 1974 at Kinshasa, the principal Frazier 'Thrilla in Manila' victory of October 1975, the principal post-boxing-career humanitarian period, and the principal Parkinson's-disease late period.

He was the principal documentary photographer of the principal Black Panther Party at Los Angeles and Oakland from 1966 to 1971 — including the principal portraits of Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, and the principal Los Angeles Black Panther Party chapter under Geronimo Pratt and Bunchy Carter.

He published in 1993 the principal monograph Muhammad Ali: A Thirty-Year Journey — the principal photographic record of the first three decades of the Bingham-Ali relationship.

He was awarded the principal Lucie Award for Documentary Photography in 2010 and the principal NABJ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

He died at Los Angeles on the fifteenth of December 2016 of complications of a long illness, at seventy-seven.

He is honored here as the principal personal photographer of Muhammad Ali.