the times square gym
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN GOODMAN ESSAY BY PETE HAMILL DISTRIBUTED ARTS PUBLISHERS 60 PHOTOGRAPHS 80 PAGES
Essay by Pete Hamill, 60 photographs, 80 pages, Distributed Arts Publishers
Pete Hamill's introduction to John Goodman's the times square gym monograph
These photographs by John Goodman were made over a period of 18 months in the Times Square Gym, a place that honored the tradition and ethos of the brutal art of boxing. Opened in 1976 by a graceful boxing man named Jimmy Glenn, it was at once school and clubhouse…
On some afternoons, there were champions in the Times Square Gym…but there were many others who never became champions…In that gym, they learned to respect themselves. They learned to be modest. They learned a discipline of the self…
In these photographs of Jimmy Glenn’s academy of respect, I am back among the fighters I saw long ago in Stillman’s and the Gramercy Gym and Gleason’s in the Bronx. I can feel the textures of the walls, the peeling paint and the aging posters, the dark brown spatter of dried blood, the salts of old saliva. I can see the worn leather on the seams of the speed bag and the hammering sound of a bell, every three minutes, followed by a minute of rest. I hear the slapping rhythms of men skipping rope while others smack the heavy bags. I can see them taping their own hands with the precision of surgeons. I hear the snort and grunt of shadowboxing, as men imagine great moves in glorious fights against phenomenal opponents. I hear the metal slam of locker doors, I hear the laughter of tough young men. I hear managers shouting into pay phones. I can smell the air, permanently stained with a million hours of human sweat.
This book is dedicated to Harry Goodman, who gave me a love of boxing. If I’d been any good, I’d have been in one of these pictures instead of taking them. I have Minor White to thank for that. He taught me the difference between between seeing and looking. Without him not only would this book not exist, but I would not be a photographer.
Joyce Carol Oates's review of the times square gym
monograph in DoubleTake Magazine
"Goodman's sympathy for these young athletes is apparent, and his skill at capturing what might be called aesthetic sympathy is riveting. John Goodman's technically brilliant the times square gym may well take its place as one of those works of memoralist beauty dedicated to boxing and the myriad ways it has gotten into our blood."
“John Goodman’s camera, however, is not an instrument of detachment, analysis, or judgment, but an iris of an eye that is our own, dissolving ostensible barriers between object and subject. His intention is to make us feel, and not merely see, the world of the Times Square Gym.”
Joyce Carol Oates' review
Duane Michals's review of John Goodman's the times square gym monograph
"John Goodman's 'the times square gym' is the best book about boxing that I've ever seen. It is very reminiscent of the great Brodovitch's book 'Ballet' in the way it captures the atmosphere of the boxer's world. You can almost hear the thud of the gloves hitting each other and smell the smoke and perspiration. All in all this is a wonderful accomplishment."
Duane Michals' hand written review
The Times Square Gym is no yuppie pleasure palace. It’s a fighter’s gym and has been for fifty years. All the legends trained here—Marciano, Foreman, Ali, La Motta and the Fly specked posters announcing their greatest fights strain and buckle from the walls. To walk into its narrow confines is to step back in time, into a world where men appraise one another silently and keep their confidences to themselves. The thunder of the heavy bags is rarely broken by words. The paint is peeling and the linoleum tile is eroding in great patches, exposing the bare wooden floor. But young men still dance their solitary dances in front of the mirror, under the eyes of older men who look hard to see if they have heart-at least in boxing, they still assume a young man has one.
Lynn Darling, Esquire June, 1994
Answering machine message from Leon Gast,
Academy Award Winning Director
When We Were Kings, 1997
”I love your book. It's incredible. It's everything but the smell. I love it."
Enthusiastic Chicago Bookseller
"Jimmy Glenn, former owner and trainer of the Times Square Gym is one of the unsung heroes in the boxing game. He has trained the best and seen the toughest boxers ever to set foot in the ring. This book is a true homage to a holdout establishment that finally succumbed to the wrecking ball in the wake of NY’s Disneyization. The pictures in this book capture the look, feel and smell of what it was like to enter that rarely travelled circle of the serious boxer looking to make it to the big time."
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Toni Bentley's review of Boxers+Ballerinas at Rick Wester Fine Art
"Goodman’s images do not capture the public moments of victory and applause, but he goes backstage with his subjects—the gym and the stage’s wings—and his view would seem so intimate as to be voyeuristic, were it not for his evident respect, even awe. "
New York Review of Books / April 3, 2014
Christopher Millis’ Boston Phoenix review of Embody exhibition
"It easy to wish for more of his work.... particularly since the vast majority of his images are marked not by abstraction but by their fleeting figurativeness. (Even his posed stills have momentum.) I was grateful to be introduced to his enormous talent."
Letter from Barbara Schultz, Assistant to the Curator
The Art Institute of Chicago, February 1997
"I was literally in tears looking at this book, about boxing, for God's sake."
A Few Rounds of Photography: A Conversation with John Goodman
Camera Arts August/September 1999 edited by John Paul Caponigro
"It's like taking a breath and the breath is so full and so right that it fills your lungs...with light."
View the full interview with John Goodman