A Friendship in Focus

His images of the dirt poor and world famous have appeared in national publications for more than 30 years, but there is an odd truth to the photography of Howard L. Bingham. No one, not even Bingham, knows the true brilliance of his work.

Forgotten images, negatives and slides never made into prints, remain buried in file cabinets and boxes. He has been telling himself for years that one of these days he should sort through them, take inventory. To the surprise of no one who knows him well, he hasn’t gotten around to it.

Most of Bingham’s photos are of his best friend, Muhammad Ali. In a cabinet under the letter M are transparencies showing Ali with Malcolm X. Bill Clinton would be somewhere in the C file. Beatles under B. The pope under P. Elvis Presley, hmm, probably E.

At age 60, Bingham, who has lived since 1969 in South-Central Los Angeles, cringes at the thought of digging through a career’s worth of work. But every now and then, when someone like Linda Lee runs him down, he takes a deep swallow of air, holds his breath and jumps into his jumbled sea, grasping for whatever is in

reach.

Lee, a research assistant at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History, came upon a Bingham photo last year and wanted to include it in a show about African American identity. But first she had to get Bingham’s permission. And that meant she had to find Bingham, not always an easy task.

“I like goin’ and doin’,” Bingham said. “It’s what I love to do. It’s fun, and no one has more fun than I do.”

Her initial attempts were unsuccessful, so she started sending letters out and phoning a dozen or so Howard Binghams in the L.A. area.

“I was calling twice a week for a month,” Lee said, “and I didn’t even know if I was calling the right Howard Bingham.”

Her tenacity paid off one day when the right Howard Bingham, realizing Lee was not going to give up, called her back, gave permission to use the photo and agreed to go through his files long enough to dig out more of his work.

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When he arrived at the museum with samples in hand, he was introduced to Doran Ross, director of the Fowler, who was duly impressed.

“I got plenty more,” he told Ross, and went home to the file marked Z, for Zaire, where one of Ali’s most extraordinary fights took place in 1974.

“Main Event: The Ali/Foreman Extravaganza Through the Lens of Howard L. Bingham” opens Sunday at the Fowler, featuring 130 images, most of which are being shown for the first time.

Fame has been slow in coming to Bingham, but in 1998, he was pictured with Ali on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The story was about friendship, about thick and thin, loyalty and trust. It was about greatness--that of a man whose fists and heart have engaged the world. And that of a photographer whose pictures have shown humanity during the best and worse of times.

Learning the

Art of the Image

They met in 1962 when Ali was still Cassius Clay and Bingham was still a rookie, being paid for the first time to take pictures. He had improved a bit from those first assignments for the Los Angeles Sentinel when he would return to the darkroom, open his camera and live a photographer’s worst nightmare. No film.

In ‘62, the Sentinel sent Bingham to a news conference to shoot the young fighter, who two years earlier had won an Olympic gold medal and had since turned pro. Bingham took his pictures and left. Later in the day, while driving through downtown L.A., Bingham spotted Ali with his brother, scoping out the women at the corner of 5th and Broadway.

Bingham stopped and asked if they needed a ride. He would be happy to show them the sights of L.A. They hopped into his Dodge Dart, and Bingham showed them around, took them home to meet his parents.

Ali would call Bingham and ask him to visit. Bingham always brought a camera. That’s just how things were. There was never an official declaration that Bingham’s role would be that of Ali’s personal photographer. It would diminish what they truly were and have remained: best of friends.

It is ironic that in a sport noted for bottom feeders, there is Bingham, a truly nice guy who despises the brutality inside the ring and the thievery outside it.

“You always knew Ali was going to be all right as long as Howard Bingham was there,” wrote the late L.A. Times columnist Jim Murray in the introduction to “Muhammad Ali: A Thirty-Year Journey,” a compilation of Bingham’s photos. “Ali trusted him. We trusted him. The hard-faced men came and went, the sycophants, con men with their own agendas, the manipulators, money-grubbers, users. Howard remained. He was the soft center in the Ali entourage.”

Wrote Ali’s wife, Lonnie: “Howard loved Muhammad for the person he was and is, not the legend he became. He decided to climb the mountain with Muhammad, and he has made the long journey down at his side with an outstretched hand for support and encouragement whenever needed.”

Gordon Parks, the first African American to be hired by Life magazine as a photographer, and film director of “The Learning Tree” and “Shaft,” said: “Only a rare few have as many selves as Muhammad Ali. To know and really understand him one has to sink deep into the geography of his soul. Howard has done that while observing him with the sensitivity of a blind man.”

Parks was referring to his Uncle Jimmy, a broom maker who lost his eyesight in an explosion. When Parks was a youngster living in Fort Scott, Kan., he would lead his uncle around town so he could sell his brooms.

“When we came to the railroad tracks, he could place his cane on the tracks and tell if a train was coming. He felt the vibrations. That’s how I think of Howard.”

Parkinson’s syndrome has robbed Ali’s body of the poetry that once flowed in the ring, but it hasn’t stopped the laughter between friends. Even now, Bingham said, when he is not with Ali, who lives in Michigan, he wishes he was.

Choosing a

Cover Shot

In preparation for Bingham’s book of photos (Simon & Schuster, 1993), editor Jeff Neuman was poring over contact sheets and paused at the image of Ali, shot from the side as he rested on a couch, his head propped up by the armrest, light from a window reflecting softly off his face and bare chest. It became the cover shot.

“Ali was just laying on the couch, and I took his picture,” Bingham said. “I didn’t see it as a great shot. I just like taking pictures, seeing something and reacting.”

In the photo, Ali’s expression is one of contemplation as he prepared to fight George Foreman, then the heavyweight champion of the world. Ali had been stripped of his title for following his conscience and refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. For 3 1/2 years, he was exiled from the ring, and in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he was in pursuit of reclaiming the title.

It was more than a sporting event. When promoter Don King announced the fight, it went to an unlikely highest bidder, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who offered $5 million to each fighter in an attempt to show himself and turbulent Zaire in a soft light.

Included in the Fowler exhibit are images of the people, the political staging, musicians including James Brown and B.B. King, who were invited to perform for the fight, which Ali won.

Bingham will likely have other exhibits. Kodak is assisting him in archiving his work, going through images of riots across the country during the 1960s, and, most notably, a lifetime of friends, including Bill and Camille Cosby.

“Friendship means everything to me,” Bingham said. His advice to young photographers deals with respect: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

A couple weeks ago on a flight from Orlando, Fla., to L.A., 3-year-old Zachary Tabori was seated with his mother in front of Bingham. Zachary, like Bingham, likes to take a good look around his surroundings, so when he turned around in his seat and they made eye contact, they immediately tossed up a high-five. Before leaving, Zachary said he would like to have a “play date” with Bingham. Their date is set for Sunday at the Fowler.

Duane Noriyuki can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.

Bingham to Speak

Howard L. Bingham will speak at 2 p.m. Sunday, introducing his exhibit at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History. The show will run through Sept. 3 and will be on view from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, and until 8 p.m. Thursdays. For more information, call (310) 825-4361 or visit the Web site at https://www.fmch.ucla.edu.