Chuck Kuhn Interview
and I remember the costume people having to adjust and pin his flight suit because it barely fit him . Those guys in that poster are legendary because they were the start of the sneaker explosion and the rise of Nike basketball .
What can you tell us about shooting Michael Jordan in 1985 ?
One thing I remember about Jordan during the few times I shot him is that more than any other athlete , he definitely enjoyed doing it . It was unbelievable how much he loved playing basketball . I usually shot the basketball players somewhere with a hoop , either a playground or a gym . The Nike account people would play pick-up games before the shoots and Jordan would always play with them for the heck of it . When the other players would shoot , they ’ d get the ball through the hoop once every few times . Jordan would get it in every single time . All of a sudden , when it was for real , something turned on and he was almost superhuman . All the other stuff , the fame and the fortune was all nice , but I could just tell he loved the game more than anyone else I ever shot . That was just the beginning of him going to the next level .
I shot Jordan for the “ Jumpman ” poster over two days in Chicago . The first day , we shot him on the playground with the shoes around his neck and the Air Jordan clothes . That was at a Catholic grade school that had a fence around the basketball court . More and more people heard about it and kept coming and lining up against the fence . We had a couple hundred or so people watching . I kept throwing Polaroids over the fence , and then Jordan threw his clothes over . The kids went nuts !
On the second day , we shot him at a park in Chicago , on this little peninsula observatory place . We set up the basket with Chicago in
the background and lit it in such a way that when the sun would go down , we would get our shot . It was just one in a series of posters we were doing back then , and no one knew where it would go at the time , but it really stepped the whole thing up . It ’ s amazing even now how many people I talk to who had that Jordan poster on their wall as a kid . In 1988 , they started using that photo as the logo for all the Air Jordan shoes and clothes .
Did you have any idea these posters would become so iconic , or considered works of art , three decades later ?
Everyone was really young , and no one really knew where this was going to go . At the time , to me at least , the athletes were just people , not legends like they are now . They were just entering the league and trying really hard . I never knew where any of these athletes would end up in their careers . When I shot them , I just did what I was trained to do . I never thought anything was so special or my ticket to ride or anything . I never saw that at all . It was more innocent back then . But I think a certain amount of innocence in life is good because it makes you a lot more open to things .
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