KEEPIN IT REAL

One of last year’s best events for sports fans is going to get a second go around in 2022 when Kevin Kaufman ‘72 drops a sequel to his 2021 documentary on photographing pro sports, G.O.A.T.s, the story of master artist Walter Iooss.

We got used to seeing Kevin take things into his own hands when in 1971 he was the State Running Back of the Year for the Georgia AA Champion Wildcats. Watching GOATs, what strikes us is that the superstars have talked so much and given so much information about their side of the story that Iooss’s photographs figured out how to tell -- giving Kevin’s effort the opportunity to look at them even more closely than Iooss’s pictures do.

The fact that Iooss, an artist, towers as a guy who shaped our idea of sports, is interesting not only because it happened before television as we know it now, but also because his achievement gives almost no hint of his personality. We know from the excellence and uniqueness of his shots that he was both incredibly industrious and sensitive, but we don’t have any clue from them that his passion was basically rooted in his teen-years curiosity and disarming youthfulness.

In this documentary, Kaufman, through the athletes, gets close to Iooss and compares the person to the work, in the same way that Iooss got close to the stars he photographed and visually compared their personalities to their work.

GOATS, a three-episode series, was licensed to ESPN for only a brief period of time --four months-- in 2021. As a series, it will show up again in due course.

But while we also wait for the second season ahead of us, Kevin gave WAM an on-demand key to his company’s copy of G.O.A.T.S Season 1 Episode 1. It’s free -- you’re nuts if you don’t go see it.

https://vimeo.com/515530359

PassWord: money

More info is at IMDB.com and on the web featuring interviews of Kevin. Ironically, Iooss is not pictured on the IMDB page of stars that he’d photographed who are cast members in the film, but don’t read anything into that...