Walter Iooss Website

"I was lucky. I had the chance to document a seminal athlete at the peak of his career," says Iooss. "He had personality, he had intellect, he was handsome, he was sensational to watch [and] he was so good in front of the camera."

"I always equated Michael to a world-class model," continues the 69-year-old photographer, who is also renowned (and envied) as the photographer of record for SI’s swimsuit edition for the past 40 years. Photographing Jordan, he explains, "was like having Elle Macpherson in front of the camera, or Heidi [Klum]. He never flinched … You couldn’t miss with this guy, no matter where he was."

Iooss first met and photographed Jordan on assignment for SI in 1987, when Jordan’s pro basketball career with the Chicago Bulls was just starting to take off. The timing was fortunate, Iooss says. "It’s harder to bond [with star athletes] after they've reached the pinnacle," because by then they live in a bubble, surrounded by handlers, he explains. "When they’re young, their life hasn’t become so complicated."

Iooss builds relationships with top athletes partly by doing whatever it takes to get dramatic, heroic pictures. "In a sense, it's continuing my childhood look at athletes, that they're these magnificent figures."

He sometimes invades their personal space and risks their ire or scorn to get those pictures. "I'm not tongue tied with these guys. I'll say virtually anything to them," he explains.

In a 2011 SI story, Iooss recounted how he approached Jordan at the 1988 All-Star Game Slam-Dunk Championship, and asked him, "Is there any way you could tell me where you're going to take off [from] to dunk?" Iooss wanted to position himself to capture Jordan's face in every shot.

"I'm sure he's thinking, 'Is this guy f—— for real?'" Iooss said in the SI story. But Jordan told him, "Yeah, I can do that," and he signaled to Iooss which side of the basket to stand on before each dunk.

Jordan noticed and appreciated good photography, and good photographers. Iooss could deliver the goods, and not waste his time, so Jordan agreed to do a book project when Iooss pitched the idea to him in 1992. (Iooss had also shot Jordan in several ad campaigns by then.) The best-selling book, called Rare Air: Michael on Michael, was about Jordan's life on and off the court during the 1992-93 season.

"He made the commitment to give me the time, and he was good about it. He’d say, 'Come over after practice, we'll hang out.' You just tag along, meet all of his friends and become part of the circle," Iooss recalls. "You have meals with the family, spend time with their kids and from that point on you have a special bond with them because you have spent that time."

Iooss had access to places where Jordan and his teammates let down their guard (and almost never admitted other journalists): their hotel rooms, the team bus, the Bulls' training room.

"You can't impose yourself. Not every day or night is a good picture. But you sort of sit back, and people trust you after a while, and say things that they wouldn't say in front of other people. You got involved. It was fun. It was great just to be a witness to so much that nobody saw."

The only explicit rule was that Iooss couldn't publish photographs of Jordan's children anywhere except in the book. Beyond that, "there are things you don’t need rules for," Iooss says. "Anything that showed any indiscretion, you didn't even want to have the camera in your hand. You know [from experience] when things are right and wrong to photograph."

(Only once in his career did he inadvertently violate the trust of an athlete, when a photograph of a baseball player smoking a cigarette in a dugout was published. It took Iooss two seasons to make amends. "It was something I never forgot," he says.)

Iooss says that the personal relationships he developed with Jordan and others he subsequently produced books about-most notably Ken Griffey Jr.-got him access and "a comfort level and a relaxation that you wouldn't get with other athletes." Iooss was able to get images that nobody else could.

But the photographs he took of Jordan and Griffey weren't necessarily better than his photographs of athletes he wasn't as close to. "It's the same thought process to take a great picture in any situation. The big equation is the time constraint" that star athletes often impose. Often, Iooss is given just five or ten minutes for an editorial shoot.

"I love the pressure of it," he says. "An athlete plays by a clock, and now I'm on their clock. To me it's just another game."

While his relationship with Jordan gave him rare access and opportunities, it could also interfere. Iooss started warning clients that the first 20 minutes of any shoot with Jordan would be spent catching up. And on one or two occasions, the socializing didn't stop.

"You can't be a chatterbox. You’ve got to concentrate. I photographed him for a Cigar Aficionado cover, and all I wanted to do is bullshit with him," says Iooss, explaining that photographing Jordan smoking a cigar wasn’t the most inspiring shoot they’d ever done together. "I did the job, but I just wanted to hang out."

Iooss last photographed Jordan in 2009 on an assignment for Golf Digest. Outside of assignments, they don’t socialize. But they never have trouble picking up where they left off. "Next time I see him, he'll say, 'What, did they pull you out of retirement for this shoot?' That’s how it will start off," Iooss says.