In 1964, Chris Smith traveled to the United States to photograph the Beatles on their first American tour. When that assignment ended, he went to Miami to see Cassius Clay training at the 5th Street Gym. Smith was curious about the young fighter already making noise in the boxing world. He arrived just as the gym doors opened; to everyone’s surprise, the Beatles walked in. That chance intersection of music and sport marks the beginning of a long photographic engagement with the man who became Muhammad Ali.

The Greatest gathers nearly one hundred photographs Smith made of Ali at the height of his career. The images are accompanied by Smith’s own recollections of time spent with Ali, from those early days through the years before retirement. The book is not a conventional biography in pictures. It is a photographer’s account, shaped by proximity and patience, of a subject whose public presence was constantly in motion. Smith’s access allows for moments both guarded and unguarded, and his memories give the pictures a personal register that distinguishes the volume from the many Ali portraits already in circulation.

GOST Books publishes the collection in a large-format hardback of 176 pages. The scale suits photographs that often depend on gesture, stance, and the texture of a crowded room. Smith is both photographer and author here: the sequencing of images and the written reflections belong to the same hand, which gives the book an internal coherence rare in sports photography monographs. For collectors of photojournalism and documentary work, the book offers a sustained look at how one photographer followed a single subject across years, and at the unexpected routes—a Beatles tour, a Miami gym—by which such bodies of work begin.