This is the photograph Kelly Hoppen can’t live without

This is a very famous photograph by Flip Schulke of Muhammad Ali. I bought it 20 years ago at my brother Michael Hoppen’s gallery. I walked in, saw it and was just like, ‘wow, that is insane’. I didn’t realise at the time that it was such an iconic image. Michael started telling me the story: Muhammad Ali couldn’t swim, so they took him down with tanks so that he could breathe while he spent hours getting used to being underwater. Then, Schulke went down to take the shot and Ali was in his boxing stance, completely composed.

I’ve had this photograph in every home I’ve lived in. We’ve just moved into this house and I already knew exactly where it was going to go. Because it’s so huge, there are probably only a few places where it would work! I’ve always been obsessed with Ali; I think he’s an extraordinary man in every respect, so it will never, ever leave my side. I just love it.

You don’t always notice art every day. It’s not as if you walk around your house and think, ‘oh, I love that’, it’s part of the whole experience of the home – but because this is such a powerful image I’ll often just sit and look at it. It makes me very calm. Photography is an extraordinary medium – when you look at a shot, you can imagine who else was there and what was happening. Obviously, with this photograph, there’s a lot on Sotheby’s and Christie’s about it (in fact, there’s a whole book dedicated to it). I think it’s this abundance of thought that goes into photography that makes it my first love over any other form of art, kellyhoppeninteriors.com.