In a restaurant near Phoenix last weekend I looked up and there was Muhammad Ali, slowly easing past my table.
Everyone knows that Parkinson's disease has stolen much from this once mightiest of men. But witnessing the toll up close, seeing him shuffle by, arms shaking, back bent, brings about sorrow and pain.
Returning to L.A., I wished to remember a different Ali, an Ali healthy and youthful and magnetic, near the peak of his formidable powers.
This led me to Howard Bingham, a photographer and lifelong resident of South Los Angeles who for 46 years has played dual roles for boxing's most revered icon: Bingham has long been one of Ali's closest and wisest friends. And, through his vibrant photographic images, he has also been the prime chronicler of the great boxer's life.
As it happens, Bingham's work is the subject of a retrospective, The Rumble in the Jungle, currently showing at the M+B gallery in Hollywood until the last day of this month.
The exhibit, featuring signed reproductions for sale, focuses on one of the seminal moments in boxing history: the dramatic heavyweight bout held in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974, Ali against George Foreman.
Bingham, a round-faced, soft-spoken 68-year-old who walks with a limp, met me at the gallery last week, ready to sift through his memories.
"Feels like all of this happened just yesterday," he said, stepping gingerly into the white-walled complex.
In 1974, he reminded, it was figured that the snarling, unimaginably powerful Foreman would devastate Ali, who at 32, possessed greatness still but was on the downside of his career.
However, from the moment Ali and his troupe of followers laid foot in Africa that fall, eight weeks before the bout, Bingham felt something special was on its way.
He paused by a row of photographs. One showed Ali, round eyed and energetic, at a welcoming parade, wading through a stadium filled with adoring fans. Ali was beloved. Foreman, because of his snarl, and because he showed up in Africa with a German shepherd , a symbol of harsh colonial rule, was despised. At the welcoming parade, Bingham said in a subdued voice, the African fans rhythmically chanted: Ali, bumbaye! Ali, bumbaye! Ali, kill him. Ali, kill him.
He walked past color shots of the first days in Africa, past black-and-whites of training days and of Ali relaxing and Ali with a legion of followers, Norman Mailer and James Brown among them.
