CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/7/2016

Muhammad Ali, Photographed by Gordon Parks

In the spring of 1966, celebrated African-American photographer Gordon Parks traveled to Miami and London to document boxing legend-in-the-making Muhammad Ali—at a time when Ali was under intense critical scrutiny for his outspoken positions on race and the Vietnam war, among other perceived transgressions. Parks published the iconic resulting photographs—alongside an intimate, searching six-spread personal essay on his relationship with the "brash, poetry-spouting kid" he had come to admire—in the September 9 issue of LIFE magazine. These photographs, and a facsimile reproduction of the entire published photo essay, are collected in Steidl's magnificent, five-volume boxed set, Gordon Parks: Collected Works.