Best Of The 50's

The light really was different back then, at least in the lens of Hy Peskin, whose black-and-white boxing photos walk the line between reportage and film noir. (If he'd shot your driver's license picture, it would probably be hanging in a museum.) Not that Peskin and his colleagues struck out when color film came along—their portraits of some ballyhooed boys of summer in their first bloom show the Kid and Hammerin' Hank in a new light.

1955
CARMEN BASILIO
The welterweight champ leaps into the arms of his cornerman after his 12th round TKO of Tony DeMarco at Boston Garden.

50's THE CLASSICS
Some sports photographs are so good and so familiar—Willie going deep, deep and deeper still to make the Catch, Version 1.0—that they have practically become archetypes, treasured snapshots from a family photo album we all share.

1954
WILLIE MAYS

1955
JACKIE ROBINSON

1956
PERFECT GAME

1954
CHARLES VS. MARCIANO

1954
LE MANS
Drivers run to their cars in the race that starts France's most famous auto race.

1954
ROGER BANNISTER

1957
HANK AARON