Clay Patrick McBride, the photographer behind the lens of SLAM 32—the iconic cover with Allen Iverson—is releasing 50 boxes featuring rare memorabilia from the shoot in an event at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York on April 13 starting at 5pm.
The event will feature select prints, behind-the-scenes polaroids of Iverson and other sports and music icons and an artist talk between McBride and VIBE Magazine editor-in-chief Dawton Thomas.
The shoot McBride did with Iverson features the only pictures ever taken of the Hall-of-Famer sporting an afro and helped jumpstart the nostalgia movement in sports and sneaker culture.
“You look at these pics of AI and he’s so in character,” McBride says. “He’s so outrageous and animated. He’s usually so cool and self-aware and poised. This time, he trusted me and let his guard down … I had never seen a picture of him like that and I doubt it’ll ever happen again.”
McBride photographed Iverson four times for SLAM, but said this shoot was unique.
“It’s the only time I had more than five minutes to photograph Allen Iverson,” he says. “Every time I did, he’d be walking to the court with his publicist and she’d have a stopwatch and say, ‘You have 5 minutes.’
He adds: “She was a pitbull … looked like a librarian. She was such a boss, though, you couldn’t fuck with her schedule at all.”
The 50 collector boxes going on sale will feature the following:
• Custom Branded Sneaker Box
• 4- 9″x13″ Edition archival inkjet prints by Clay Patrick McBride from the 1999 session signed & embossed
• Editioned illustration of Allen Iverson “Soul On Ice” SLAM Cover by Sarah “Kneeslappa” Keane McBride
• One-of-a-Kind Silkscreen Portrait of Iverson
• T-shirt
• PINTRILL enamel pin
• Sticker Bundle
• Embroidered patch
• Certificate of authenticity
10 of the boxes will be signed by Iverson and McBride.
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COP YOUR ALLEN IVERSON SLAM COVER TEE HERE.
For more information, visit McBride’s website.
