PREVIOUS PROJECT - THE espy collection
“Select 40 ESPN-ESPY winners from the past decade, unquestionably some the greatest athletes of our time, take them off the field and out of uniform, and reveal the men and women at the core of the legends”. That was the goal of photographer Rick Chapman, whether he was having lunch with Muhammad Ali at his home in southern Michigan, strolling with Sammy Sosa at Wrigley Field, capturing Cal Ripken Jr. moments before his final game on Oct 6, 2001 or hanging with Shaq in Hollywood before the NBA Finals. Between 2001 and 2006, ESPN commissioned Chapman to take his fine art approach to making portraits of this select group of celebrity athletes. Created in a very limited edition, the prints of these portraits were auctioned to raise significant funds for the V Foundation for Cancer Research and were placed in important museum and private collections all over the USA. In 2013 the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery acquired an entire portfolio of 40 prints, signed by the athletes and the artist, for the museum’s permanent collection.
