Product Description

If every picture tells a story, every slide tells an even deeper one. Tucked away in Sports Illustrated's photo archive sits 50 years worth of film, a frame-by-frame depiction of the history of sports over the last half a century. The stickers and scribbles along a single slide's border are like tags on a streamer trunk, telling the story of that photo's journey from the playing field to the magazine. This book selects the most colorful of these slides and presents the mounts as objects of art in an oversized 176-page collection, complete with behind-the-scenes vignettes of how the shots came to be. Some slides capture classic SI cover images (Dwight Clark's catch in the 1982 NFC Championship Game or Brandi Chastain ripping her shirt off at the 1999 World Cup) while others are simply great photos (Pete Rose running at full speed or Joe Namath lounging poolside before Super Bowl III). The images themselves are iconic, but by seeing them as slides you get that extra step back. You can see the history that has been made from these flashes of an instant.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27871 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

Customer Reviews

Great idea, poor execution!
Short and the sweet. SI has been in existence for over 50+ years now. You would think that they would have more pictures available to create a book of 300 pages or more. This book, or "pamphlet", at 170+ pages is sparse, and not what I expected from SI. The binding is poorly made, and you could possibly loose the pages if not careful. I also think the presentation/format leaves much to be desired, skimping on full reproductions of the slides. If your a "die-hard" SI fan, and have the money to blow.....then I guess you will. For me the book is going back, and I give this book an enthusiastic "DO NOT BUY!!!!"

Not as cool as it sounds
I am not much of a picturebook or coffee table book guy so this was a slight departure for me to pick this up. I was excited because I know how great some of the SI sports photography is.

Upon opening this book, I was immediately dissapointed. Each image is just a photo of the actual slide. The images are all smallish and dont pop. The images try telling more of a story behind some of the great sports moments but I just didnt get into it. I guess I was expecting typical big-format photography. I should have read the details of the book better before ordering. I like the concept behind the book, but it probably would be better as a small format or glosssy paperback.

To top off my dissapointment with the content, the binding of the book tore off from the page glue after scanning through this exactly one time. The book probably deserves 2 or 2 1/2 stars for the true diehards, but the bad publishing quality takes it to one.

Overall, it seemed like poor execution on this one. I returned the product.

A Unique and Fascinating Look Look Behind the Shots
There has never been a book like this one: a chance to examine the process of selecting and displaying the final images in Sports Illustrated, the fan bible of sports. Many, of not all, of these images have become classics, engraved in our collective imaginations. But how did they attain iconic status? This big (and beautifully designed and produced) collectible volume has a unique conceit: it enlarges the original transparency and its marked-up slide mount to gigantic size, describes what those markings on the mount represent, then shows (and explains) how the image was used on the cover or inside the magazine. Significantly, this book documents a now almost-vanished era; most photographers are now shooting digitally, so there will no longer be a "paper trail" of documentation, with all of its handwritten charm, following a slide's editorial evolution. A great concept, and well-done; this book has provided me with many hours of enjoyment.