Robert Riger was a celebrated sports illustrator, photographer, award-winning television director, and cinematographer.

John Szarkowski

John Szarkowski

John Szarkowski was a photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.-Early life and career:...

, former director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, said, "His photographs are documents, and the best of them are also pictures that now have a life of their own, and that would have given intense pleasure to George Stubbs

George Stubbs

George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.-Biography:Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the...

 and Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....

 and Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...

."

David Halberstam

David Halberstam

David Halberstam was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and historian, known for his early work on the Vietnam War, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his later sports journalism.-Early life and education:Halberstam...

, said "Robert Riger was the preeminent artist of a golden age of American sports in the years after World War II."

Early life

Born in 1924 in Manhattan, Riger attended The High School of Music & Art

The High School of Music & Art

The High School of Music & Art, informally known as "Music & Art", was a public alternative high school at 443-465 West 135th Street, New York, New York, USA that existed from 1936 through 1984, and then merged into the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing...

, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy

United States Merchant Marine Academy

The United States Merchant Marine Academy is one of the five United States Service academies...

, and later earned a BA from Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 in Brooklyn. After serving three years in the Merchant Marine during World War II, Riger made his first sports drawing in 1945: a scene from an Army-Notre Dame football game. From 1947 to 1949 Riger did magazine layout for Esquire (magazine)

Esquire (magazine)

Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

 and The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

, then worked as an advertising art director until 1955, when he became a freelance illustrator. He was a regular contributor to Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

 since its first month of publication in 1954. During his career, the magazine published more than 1,200 of his editorial drawings and over 200 of his promotional and advertising drawings.

Photography

In 1950, he began taking photographs as a research tool for his drawings. What started as a secondary medium became what Riger was most known for. He described his approach to sports journalism:

You cannot possibly photograph sport unless you understand it completely, and understand and know the men who play it. The same intensity they have to play the game you must have to record it. Not stop it, but suspend it forever in time.

From 1950 to 1994, he copyrighted more than 90,000 master photographic negatives, more than 40,000 of them involving pro football. Many of these photographs appeared in Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

, and Riger published two ground-breaking books of sports photo-journalism: The Pros: A Documentary of Professional Football in America, Simon & Schuster, 1960 and The American Diamond, Simon & Schuster, 1965. In addition to football and baseball, Riger's images cover boxing, horse racing, and all things Olympic. (see Getty Images http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?contractUrl=2&language=en-uS&family=editorial&p=riger&assetType=image&src=quick#) His subjects were celebrated athletes of the day: Ted Williams

Ted Williams

Theodore Samuel "Ted" Williams was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 21-year Major League Baseball career as the left fielder for the Boston Red Sox...

, Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...

, Willie Mays

Willie Mays

Willie Howard Mays, Jr. is a retired American professional baseball player who played the majority of his major league career with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. Nicknamed The Say Hey Kid, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his...

, Johnny Unitas

Johnny Unitas

John Constantine Unitas , known as Johnny Unitas or "Johnny U", and nicknamed "The Golden Arm", was a professional American football player in the 1950s through the 1970s, spending the majority of his career with the Baltimore Colts. He was a record-setting quarterback, and the National Football...

, Frank Gifford

Frank Gifford

Francis Newton "Frank" Gifford is a Hall of Fame former American football player and American sportscaster.-Early life:Gifford was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Lola Mae and Weldon Gifford, an oil driller....

, Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...

, Jim Clark

Jim Clark

James "Jim" Clark, Jr OBE was a British Formula One racing driver from Scotland, who won two World Championships, in 1963 and 1965....

, Eddie Arcaro

Eddie Arcaro

George Edward Arcaro , known professionally as Eddie Arcaro, was an American Thoroughbred horse racing Hall of Fame jockey who won more American classic races than any other jockey in history and is the only rider to have won the U.S. Triple Crown twice...

, Nadia Comăneci

Nadia Comaneci

Nadia Elena Comăneci is a Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the first female gymnast ever to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. She is also the winner of two gold medals at the 1980 Summer...

, Wilma Rudolph

Wilma Rudolph

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was an American athlete. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960....

, Pele

Pelé

However, Pelé has always maintained that those are mistakes, that he was actually named Edson and that he was born on 23 October 1940.), best known by his nickname Pelé , is a retired Brazilian footballer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest football players of all time...

 and those who coached them Vince Lombardi

Vince Lombardi

Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi was an American football coach. He is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, where he led the team to three straight league championships and five in seven years, including winning the first two Super Bowls following the 1966 and...

, Willie Schaeffler among others.

Television & Film

Riger's television career began with Monday morning football analysis on Today (NBC Program) on NBC in 1961. In 1963, he began three years of world travel and weekly appearances on ABC's Wide World of Sports (U.S. TV series)," doing the incisive on-camera picture reporting that preceded the days of color and gave ABC Sports an added dimension to their coverage. At ABC, where he worked from 1963 to 1970 and again from 1977 to 1980, he won nine Emmy awards. He developed his ground breaking slow-motion video work on the broadcasts of the 1968, 1976 and 1984 Summer Olympic Games

Summer Olympic Games

The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by the International Olympic Committee. Medals are awarded in each event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that...

 and the 1980 Winter Olympic Games

Winter Olympic Games

The Winter Olympic Games is a sporting event, which occurs every four years. The first celebration of the Winter Olympics was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. The original sports were alpine and cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping and speed skating...

. As Second Unit Director, Riger was responsible for the acclaimed soccer sequences in the movie Escape to Victory

Escape to Victory

Escape to Victory, known simply as Victory in North America, is a 1981 film about Allied prisoners of war who are interned in a German prison camp during World War II...

 (1981), directed by John Houston

John Houston

John Houston is the name of:* John Houston * John Houston , Pioneer newspaperman and politician from British Columbia, Canada* John Houston , New Zealand historian and writer...

, which deals with Allied prisoners of war facing German soccer stars during World War II and starring Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone

Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed...

.

Books & Exhibitions

Riger was also the author and illustrator of over 13 books, many of the early ones for juvenile audiences. In 1963, author Ralph Moody wrote Come On Seabiscuit

Seabiscuit

Seabiscuit was a champion Thoroughbred racehorse in the United States. From an inauspicious start, Seabiscuit became an unlikely champion and a symbol of hope to many Americans during the Great Depression...

 (ISBN 0-8032-8287-7), which was illustrated by Robert Riger and recently brought back into print by the University of Nebraska Press. It served as an inspiration for Laura Hillenbrand. On the radio show Fresh Air with Terry Gross on July 29, 2003, Hillenbrand said of Moody's book:

When I was about seven years old. . . . I found a children's book called Come on Seabiscuit! which was just wonderful! I read it so many times I broke the spine and all the pages fell out. I still have it; it has to be wrapped in rubber bands because the pages will go everywhere. But that book in just vivid prose told the story of the horse.

A month before he died in 1995, Riger completed his last book, The Sports Photography of Robert Riger (Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

), and finished preparation for a definitive exhibit of his photography at the James Danziger Gallery in New York City. In April, Riger taped an appearance on 'Charlie Rose' discussing his entire career.

Family

Riger was the son of Harry St. John Cooke and Irene Teresa Riger of New York city. He first married Eleanor Sanger

Eleanor Sanger

Eleanor Sanger was a 7-time Emmy-award winning television writer and producer, who was the first woman Network Sports Producer....

(the first woman television sports producer) in 1950 and had four children by their marriage, Christopher Riger, born 1951, Victoria Riger Phillips, born 1952, Robert Paris Riger, born 1960, and Charlotte Irene Riger, born 1963. His second marriage was to the writer Dawn Aberg; their children are Ariel Aberg-Riger (born 1981) and John Maxwell Aberg-Riger (born 1983).