"I always think that if I had had any money and any decent equipment, I would never have taken that picture"

Neil Leifer:  Alan Ameche TouchdownN.Y. Giants vs. Baltimore Colts, NFL Championship Game
Yankee Stadium, Bronx, N.Y., December 28, 1958

"There is a picture of Alan Ameche scoring the winning touchdown in what has been referred to as "the greatest game ever played". It was the famous sudden death between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, which coincidentally took place on my 16th birthday, December 28th 1958. When Alan Ameche scored the winning touchdown there were so many Colt’s fans, (mainly drunken Colt’s fans) on the field that the security had their hands full just making sure that they could keep those people off the field. They weren’t worried about someone like me that they had seen every week. So I ended up exactly ten yards in front of Ameche as he scored the winning touchdown. He came right at me and I got that picture, which today, is certainly one of my best-known pictures. I always think that if I had had any money and any decent equipment, I would never have taken that picture because, if I would have had a long lens, a 135mm or a 180mm, I would have tried to fill the frame with Ameche going in for the winning touchdown. Instead I got the wide shot that takes in the whole ambiance of Yankee Stadium that afternoon which is so much better than any picture I would have taken years later when I was an established pro." -- Neil Leifer

Bonus: Live Blog of Today's Super Bowl Commercials

NEIL LEIFER SPECIAL HOLIDAY BOOK SIGNING DECEMBER 4 AND 5

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to host a special exhibition and book signing celebrating Neil Leifer's most recent book, "Guts and Glory: The Golden Age of American Football”. The exhibition opens with a reception for the photographer on Friday, December 4, 5 - 7 PM, and Neil Leifer will sign books that evening and again on Saturday, December 5 from 1 to 3.

Leifer will also sign his earlier books, "The Best of Leifer"; "Portraits", and Baseball: Ballet in the Dirt". Supplies are limited.

Published by Taschen, "Guts and Glory" contains the best of sports photographer Neil Leifer's 10,000 rolls of football pictures, including hundreds of previously unpublished images. It is a glorious oversize-volume format that weighs 7 pounds, with red-and-white silk cloth overboards and is a limited edition of 1500 numbered and signed copies. Neil Leifer became a professional photographer while still in his teens. In 1958, he took the picture that remains one of his most famous to this day - Alan Ameche's game-winning "Sudden Death" in a game to this day called "The Greatest Ever Played," Beginning in 1960 as a freelancer, his pictures began regularly appearing in every major national magazine, including the Saturday Evening Post, Look, LIFE, Newsweek, Time and, most often, Sports Illustrated. By 1990, his photographs had appeared on more than 200 covers.

Neil Leifer is responsible for photographing many of the images we hold in our minds of the iconic figures of sports history. His unforgettable photograph of Muhammad Ali standing over a fallen Sonny Liston in 1965 has been called perhaps the greatest in sports history.

Gallery hours are 10 to 6 Monday through Saturday, 10 to 5 Sunday. Admission is free. For further information,  please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com