New York Giants

Behind the lens: Walter Iooss Jr. talks Super Bowl

Updated Mar. 5, 2020 12:05 a.m. ET

Fansided, Matt Verderame/Fansided

Every great career can be traced back to a single moment. It is often unremarkable, some seemingly inconsequential experience that shapes a life.

Walter Iooss Jr. had his moment more than 57 years ago in the Bronx, at East 161st street and River Avenue. It was a football game between two teams that were opposites in every way. One was going to its third NFL Championship Game in four years. The other was toiling as a second-rate team in a two-team town, and would relocate only a few months later.

Iooss Jr. packed up his Asahi Pentax camera with a 300 millimeter Takumar lens and went to Yankee Stadium.

“My father was a musician in New York and it was a hobby of his,” Iooss said. “He bought season tickets to the New York Football Giants. He lived in Brooklyn and I lived in East Orange, New Jersey. My parents were divorced. I saw him on Sundays so we went to the Giants game against the Chicago Cardinals. November 8, 1959. That was when I took my first picture. … A year and a half later, July 1961, I had my first assignment for Sports Illustrated.”

Iooss’ photograph from 1959 Giants-Cardinals game

That assignment — covering Archie Chester, an 83-year-old sailor — began a career which ranks among the most impressive in photography history. You name the major sporting event, chances are Iooss was there. He has captured everything from Roger Maris making history in 1961 to Dwight Clark’s “The Catch.”

Iooss has an uncanny ability to recall the smallest of details from decades ago, perhaps a window into why his photos are so nuanced. When talking about the Super Bowl, the 73-year-old remembers a particular halftime show in January 1972. While the Miami Dolphins were trying to figure out the Dallas Cowboys (they never did, and lost 24-3), a man lit himself on fire as part of the act. This is likely not in the plans for Super Bowl LI.

That’s as clear an indication as any of how wildly the sport’s greatest stage has changed through the years, and Iooss has witnessed that change first-hand. He has been to every Super Bowl ever played, one of only three photographers who can make that claim.

Iooss on his first Sports Illustrated assignment with Archie Chester (1961)

In January 1967, the first Super Bowl (or the AFL-NFL Championship Game, as it was) was held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum between the Kansas City Chiefs and Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. For many, the contest was intriguing yet anticlimactic. Iooss remembers it for another reason.

“The first Super Bowl to me was a disappointment in so many ways,” Iooss said. “They went from games in Cleveland and Green Bay, not that I wanted to be frozen, but it felt sterile in a neutral site. I think it worked out well, but Sports Illustrated that day had two charter jets to get film back to New York. The most important part of shooting for Sports Illustrated in the 1960s and ’70s was getting the film to New York. Nobody was better than SI photographers at leaving (the game). … One plane left at halftime and one at the end of the game. Neil Leifer, Jim Drake and I went from Los Angeles to Grand Island, Nebraska to refuel, and then to New York City.”

Things are a little different now. The Super Bowl has become the largest commercial event in America, while images can now be sent across the globe faster than the blink of an eye. The game itself has undergone changes both on the field and in the board room, with one of the biggest shifts taking place in the mid-1970s.

In 1974, the NFL planned to host the first ever indoor Super Bowl, with the Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers to play in the newly-constructed Louisiana Superdome. The stadium wasn’t completed in time, however, forcing the game outdoors into Tulane Stadium.

Three years later, the league finally got its indoor Super Bowl. On television, the game had a different look. For Iooss, trying to photograph the game was a complete mess. While his opinion of that afternoon, and of domes in general, is largely negative, time has softened his feelings.

“To go from Pasadena to the Superdome was a shock,” Iooss said. “Everyone was chainsmoking and it was a terrible arena. They set off fireworks and in the second half, you couldn’t see the other end zone. It was like Beijing. Now, I’ve gotten lazy. I don’t even want a game outdoors. Weather should be removed from the Super Bowl. Who gives a shit? It’s like the Grammy’s now. Let’s keep it indoors and not worry about it.”