Mike Tyson by Lori Grinker

Lori Grinker is an award-winning New York photographer, artist, educator, and filmmaker, a member of Contact Press Images, recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fellowship and the Hasselblad Foundation Grant, and author of several books, including Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict, designed and published by de.MO. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, among others.

The story behind this book began with an art school photography assignment. Grinker was shooting a project on young boxers under the guidance of legendary trainer Cus D’Amato, who asked her to follow the larger kid working a speed bag in the corner, a 13-year-old named Mike Tyson, whom D’Amato believed would one day be heavyweight champion of the world. Grinker continued to follow Tyson for decades, documenting the different stages of his life, career, and passions in an intimate photo essay that moves from boy to champion to icon.

Published by powerHouse Books in 2022, the book was designed by de.MO around the concept of the photo album, a format chosen to reflect the personal nature of Grinker’s photography. Intimate moments are set alongside large-scale fighting images that expand into dramatic foldouts, creating a photography book design that is at once monumental and private.