The Hidden Stories Within the Contact Sheets For every iconic photograph of Muhammad Ali that the world has come to know, there are dozens more that remained unseen for decades. The contact sheets from Chris Smith’s extensive archive reveal a fascinating layer of storytelling that goes far beyond the final selected images. These small, sequential

Behind every great photography book lies a story of how the images came to be. Muhammad Ali — The Greatest, published by GOST in collaboration with Alon Zakaim Fine Art, is no exception. The book brings together nearly 100 photographs by Chris Smith, accompanied by two illuminating essays from writer Paolo Hewitt and gallerist Alon

Dawn on Bayshore – Ali Alone with the Road Before Miami is fully awake, Ali is already out on Bayshore, cutting a lone figure against the first thin line of light. Heavy training boots bite into the damp grass as he follows the same looping route around the course, the same routine that prepared him

The Ali–Frazier rivalry did not end in March 1971. Three years later, in January 1974, they met again at Madison Square Garden – this time without a world title on the line, but with everything else still at stake: pride, legacy, and the right to face George Foreman for the championship. Chris Smith was there

Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, was where Muhammad Ali went to become unreachable. Perched on a wooded hilltop in the Pocono foothills, his self-built training compound was part frontier homestead, part boxing monastery. Chris Smith’s photographs from these sessions – taken across multiple visits in the mid-1970s – capture the champion at his most focused and his

Muhammad Ali’s training camps were worlds unto themselves – part monastery, part theatre, part battleground. Whether at the rustic log cabins of Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, or under the low ceilings of 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach, the preparation for a fight was a ritual that blended discipline with spectacle. Chris Smith’s photographs from these

Away from the ring and the training camp, Muhammad Ali belonged to the streets. Not in any abstract sense, but physically, visibly, surrounded by crowds wherever he walked. Chris Smith’s photographs from New York and Miami’s Overtown neighbourhood capture a side of Ali that fight-night images never could: the champion as a public figure moving