Show your Hunt and RMY photo wins
 

2 great photo auctions just ended. I'm curious where all these gems ended up.

I was bottom feeding for the most part. Got a few Conlan HOF umpires, some cheap Wilbert Robinson's, a Frank Chance with a chipped corner and the Admiral Schlei Thompson T 205 image.

The only big-ish one I got was the Cobb Brunner's Bread image.

Also got a couple cheap action shots of Martin Dihigo as well as the Babe Didrikson/Joe Hauser images from RMY.

In the Hunt Auction, I won lots

51, 92, 97, 105, 126, 355 (the Phillippe T205 image), 389, 423, and 602. The non-Pirates related images are for resale. If anyone is interested on here, let me know.

Tom, I was the high internet bidder on the Brunner's Cobb, but set my limit at $1,200. I think it was a good pick-up at what you paid, I just didn't have the dough. My plan was to clean up the messy bits of the background...after consulting you guys of course.

My favorite pick-up was the Gonzales catcher-gear Conlon.

Scott

Are photos more like movie posters in as much as restoration is fine, and sometimes preferable, if it is disclosed?

I got 3 Gibson's from Hunt. (Not the t205 image - under-bidder)

I believe so. In the case of your Cobb it used to be a clean print, then the grey masking was added, then someone apparently got parts of it wet and smudged it. To me, cleaning up the smudged area is fine - even cleaning off all the grey masking would be okay if you could do so without damaging the emulsion. Many of the more expensive photos in this auction have had the masking removed (per Hunt auction descriptions) and it didn't seem to affect prices adversely.

I always clean off anything on a print that is visually unappealing. Here are some of my wins from today (I won't be cleaning up Al).

Congrats to all the winners! That Gonzalez shot is among my favorites within the collection.


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Mr. Meyers
 

T205 image

http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/a...pswqzk3rae.jpg

RMY winnings
 

Congrats to the other RMY winners.

I ended up winning Lot # 587: 1959 Harvey Haddix, "12 Inning Perfect Game" Congratulations for Hard Luck Loser. It's a photo of Pirates Manager Danny Murtaugh congratulating Haddix on the game that some feel was arguably the greatest game ever pitched. Haddix became the first and only pitcher to hurl over 12 inning of perfect ball before allowing a hit and eventually losing the game.

Original images to this game are scarce & this is one that I had never seen before. I'm thrilled to have been able to add it to my advanced no-hitter collection.

The photos in these 2 auctions were unreal. Some of the greatest photos to come to auction in a while. I won 4 Horners and a Cobb/McGraw from RMY...

If the winner of the Patterson Horner from RMY is a board member I would appreciate a pm.

Looking forward to seeing some more pick ups!

I went a little crazy in Hunt. Some additions to my Matty/Giants collection.

Paul, awesome Matty pics! I love the one of him at-bat.

Side note, if anyone on here won the Greenberg/Kiner photo in RMY, please PM me.

Congrats on those! Enjoy them. Donlin receiving the gold bat is a favorite of mine.


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Congrats Paul, your Matty collection is quickly becoming next level.

I loved this photo of Hack. Had to have it:

https://rmyauctions.com/images_items/item_35056_1.jpg

Thanks guys! I agree Andrew. I really like that one too!

Shipping my oldest up to university this summer. Have to sit some of these out. The MLK Montgomery bus boycott was a special piece. The Campanella and Newcombe Nashua DOdgers was a cool photo.

Great pickups gents. Some absolute gems this go around.

Somehow I missed out on even knowing Hunt Auctions had all these great photos at auction. Congrats to all on some amazing photos. I did manage to pick up & fill a big hole in my collection last weekend from RMY.

Jeremy - I was dying to start a thread about it, but common sense won out :)

These are all great Matty pics, but the 'batting' one was my favorite - I love the early action shots!

I put in three internet bids the other day and had to miss the live auction. Surprisingly, two of them held up. I guess the big-buck photo guys quit after Day 1?

Please tell me that there is not a problem with it. I've been trying to add a Josh Gibson piece to my collection for quite a while & it would crush me.

Sorry - I miscommunicated. I meant I was dying to start a thread about the Hunt auction so that we could talk about all the great photos, but I decided not to warn any extra bidders! I know nothing about your photo, but it looks nice.

I get it.

Great pickup Jeremy! I need to add a Gibson to my collection too someday.

Thanks Scott! Love the Mel Ott's!

Paul- Thanks. I missed out on a few Gibson photos lately & decided it was time.

Picked up this Ray Schalk photo.

I picked up a couple of photos used for cards. A circa 1908 photo used for the 1911 Baseball Bats Bender and a circa 1905 Thompson photo used for the D304 Lajoie.

Attachment 323216 Attachment 323217

Attachment 323218 Attachment 323219

I forgot I won this Jess Willard photo too. I can never pass up a Bain:

https://rmyauctions.com/images_items/item_34938_1.jpg

There is more to come from Hunt and the Photo File archive. Stay tuned :) .

Smokey Joe
 

Paul Thompson

Bob, congrats on that one. Beauty :) .

You outbid me on that one Bob! Great image!!!

Was happy to win a couple of T205 images (Paul Thompson)…

Gaspar and Archer

I won this photo of the Senators' pitchers for the 1924 World Series in RMY:
https://rmyauctions.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=34998

I've long owned a similar photo of the Senators' pitchers for the 1925 World Series which I will probably sell, as my collecting focus is the 1924 Senators.

The t205 images really are incredible. Thompson had serious skill.

Thinking the same thing. Great stuff.

Show your Hunt and RMY photo wins
 

Many collectors may not realize there are also dozens, if not hundreds more Paul Thompson portraits out there that did not appear on T205’s but are just as great.

For example, the shot on the right is a T205 image, shot on the left is not:

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...1a89d188d1.jpg




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Paul Thompson was not a photographer; he was a businessman who ran a large photo agency. None of the images attributed to Thompson were actually taken by him. The images used to make the T205 set were probably taken by a dozen or more different photographers shooting on assignment.

There is a post in this thread that says something similar; however, no reference to where he got his information: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=88365

Can you please share your exact reference for this?

Surprisingly, there is very little info out there on Paul Thompson, though it is known he ran a news photo service. I’m under the impression he was the actual photographer for at least some of the T205 images, as referenced in this 2009 Smithsonian article:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-...j2D9YY0Ue7z.99




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I'm a little late to the party but this photo is awesome. You can actually see the photographer standing in front of Meyers in the reflection in his pupils. That's cool.



.

For sure! This is actually the case with many of the portraits. Neat stuff.



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Thompson
 

I heard the same thing a few years ago but heard it was Bainthat had many photographers working for his service. I find it difficult to believe that several/many peoples all worked for the same company and all the images look and feel the same way? If you look at all the Paul Thompson photos, they all have the same feel and look. How could have several people all manage that? This also goes for Bain as well? Just curious

Bob, I once had your new Thompson Joe Wood image, along with a corresponding image of Mathewson with a bat, almost as if taken together.
On The Who was the photographer question I can’t add actual facts or citations, but I can say that as a collector of both Bain and Thompson images in the 80’s and 90’s, before the current craze, all the collectors I knew accepted that the photos were taken by various photographers working for a larger agency. Also I think you can notice quite a difference in some of the Thompson’s which can sometimes be just out of focus. For what it is worth, the early feeling amoung collectors ranked Thompson behind Bain and Conlan in value. All three were of the highest order. There was a show of their work just after the famous Baseball Magazine sale, in New York I believe, but I no longer have my photos or material.
Finally, if Sphere and Ash is who I think he is, he used to possess one of the 3 greatest photo collections I have ever seen and was considered one of the most knowledgeable collectors of the time, who was very helpful to a fellow collector with a small budget.
At the risk of sounding like an Old Timer, which I quess I am, this was all taking place when you could get 100’s of these photos at one time. We would sometimes hold drafts of collections we had purchased, with later trades etc.
the collections that I know are still out there are truly amazing.

Many years ago, I found an obituary for Thompson that stated directly that he was not a photographer. I can't find it at the moment, but I do see obituaries that state that he was a writer who saw the business opportunity and founded the photo agency a few years after graduating from Yale [Thompson died in 1940]. There is no contemporary source that states that Thompson was a photographer, which would be quite odd for someone whose name was so widely published.

If you look at the T205 images, you'll see that each city has its own distinct look, supporting the conjecture that each city was taken by a different photographer. The Philadelphia A's photographer, for example, has many of his subjects look away from the camera; the New York Giants' photographer has everyone stare directly into the lens.

Bain was trained as a wet plate photographer, but he was no longer a photojournalist by the time the Bain agency was active.

Thanks, bgar3. I've been following your posts about your Red Stocking and early baseball collection. Glad you're back.

Recent craze? Paul Thompson has been getting higher prices(particular in ruth) for a long while now. For good reason, they are beautiful images. Some of them rivaled by no one.
To say Paul Thompson was in no way a photographer and that he took zero photos ever, is just not factual. There is no way of knowing this and the library of Congress disagrees.
Even with a 1940 obit saying something, it was probably written by someone born in the 1800s. Photography was not a glamorous job. Talking in absolutes when absolutes aren’t known, or can never be proven seems odd to me. My guess is neither of you have Paul Thompson centric collections :-)
In my opinion, Paul Thompson credited photos are some of the greatest shots in baseball history. Some are perfect some are less than perfect just like Conlon, Bain, Van Oeyen etc..
I enjoy Some more than others but appreciate all of them.

Show your Hunt and RMY photo wins
 

Here is a link to his New York Times obit:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/tim.../113120865.pdf

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...12c59f362b.png

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...054510ae93.png

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...5a466ad8bb.png

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...bdd6644236.png

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...060dbe682d.png

I believe the T205 images are spectacular and undervalued (disclosure: I own about a dozen and bought some in Hunt). It's my conjecture that they were taken expressly for the T205 set, which may explain in part why they represent such ground-breaking portraiture for their time.

I think the onus is on anyone asserting that Thompson took the images for which his agency is credited: find a contemporary reference. Conlon left mountains of evidence that he was a photographer--he entered his images into competitions, he wrote articles, he granted interviews. If Thompson was a photographer, there's a mention of it somewhere.

Edited to add: just saw the New York Times obituary. I don't think we're going to get a clearer statement than this: "Many people naturally assumed that Mr. Thompson was, or had been, an expert cameraman himself, but such was not the case." Thanks for finding it, Andrew.

My reference to recent craze was to contrast it to the 80’s and 90’s, what I thought was obvious was apparently not. So there is no misunderstanding I think photographs identified as Paul Thompson are fantastic and among the best. In fact in the Baseball Magazine sale I believe I paid then record prices for lots of Thompson photos. Oh the good old days.
Thanks for the obituary.

No problemo. Totally in agreement that the vast majority of Paul Thompson stamped photos were not shot by him. Still, the obit indicates that he did a shoot with Mark Twain and the Smithsonian article I linked to previously claims the copyrights for the T205 portraits alone are under his name. This is all certainly worthy of further investigation:

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...d06dca2a0b.png




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Wow. That is an interesting obit.

I do notice one thing about the obit and the Smithsonian article. Neither says absolutely that he did or did not take photos himself.

In the smithsonian article regarding the T205s...
"The gold borders sported another enhancement—portraits based on a remarkable series of contemplative close-ups by a New York City-based freelance photographer named Paul Thompson. Thompson, who built his reputation and his studio on a sitting with Mark Twain, would hire others to take pictures for him, but the gold-border portraits are attributed to him because they alone are copyrighted under his name."

To me this means, they assume he took them because no one else was given credit, not because someone has specific proof he did. This conclusion, which in many ways is a reasonable and logical one to make, is clearly disproven by the story towards the end of the obit about the boat race. This clearly shows photos taken by others were not just released, but were published, under his name.

Second, In the obit...
"Many people naturally assumed that Mr. Thompson was, or had been, an expert cameraman himself, but such was not the case. His success in developing his business came from his ability to select able associates, several of whom started their careers with him as office boys."

Now this does not say he never took photos. He obviously took the Twain ones. I assume he took many others, but there is no way to know for sure how many. Additionally, there is no way to know which one were specifically taken by him vs his employees.

When you put this information together, the only absolute conclusion you can make is that other photographers took at least some of the photos credited to Paul Thompson.

I've been thinking about the sentence, "the gold-border portraits are attributed to him because they alone are copyrighted under his name," and it doesn't make sense. Just because you hold a copyright doesn't mean that you're the artist. All it means is that Thompson was the employer or commissioning party.

I respectfully disagree with Lordstan that the most one can say is that other photographers took some Thompson agency images. There is no evidence at all that Thompson took a single image after he started his agency. Quite to the contrary, The New York Times made it a point to note that Thompson was not an "expert cameraman" and that the success of his business depended on "able associates."

By the way, I actually sold all of my Thompson portraits today while contributing to this thread (to a fellow board member), so this opinion was not in my economic interest. It's just something I've thought about for many years.

Here are the ones I got at Hunt Auctions. All Charles Conlon’s 8x10’s. Love the Ira Thomas with the Ads on the back!
Also looking for the winner of lots #262 & 493. I’m interested if you want to trade or sell. Andy

This conversation has certainly gotten me thinking about the early baseball photographers and what we really know about them.

With some of the famous photographers there are stories as well as photos of them taking photos, leaving no doubt;e.g-Charles Conlon, the Frances Burke/George Burke connection, Horner's portraits. I haven't heard stories about Van Oeyen, but his images are consistent than in terms of composition and general feel. Even George Bain photos generally have a typical look and feel;i.e-you see some photos and know they are Bain images, as opposed to the images he pilfered. But as collectors we know he ran a news agency and that a 'Bain' that doesn't look like a Bain probably isn't.

Thompson has groups of photos that appear to be taken by the same photographer;e.g-a lot of his images of players batting or fielding have a Thompson 'look'. The T205 portraits also have a common look, but what struck me when I first saw the large Hunt group was that the portraits didn't look like they were taken by the same guy who did the action shots. Some of that I'm sure is because portraits have different requirements (depth of field, facial expressions) that action shots don't; however, I think Conlons portraits and action shots have more in common.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that two different photographers did the T205 portraits and the action shots.

I think we are saying the same thing here. The story about the boat race clearly shows that photos were published under his name that he did not take.

Well. I can understand your point. I think we are talking about semantics here. Having success "depending on able body associates" is not the same as not taking any photos at all. If he took only 1%, or for that matter even only 1, of the photos then the statement in the Obit is still true. I hold by my conclusion in that there is no doubt that others took photos for him, but there is nothing stated or implied that he never took ANY.

All of this is, of course, focusing on the minutiae of semantics. The reality is that Thompson photos are pretty great regardless of who took them. Considering that many seem to share the same aesthetic, it is likely that he had one main photographer who did the bulk of his work.

Van Oeyen is my favorite and is essentially the opposite of what we have been discussing here on Paul Thompson and George Grantham Bain. Louis Van Oeyen was a skilled photographer who never outsourced that I am aware of and in fact, the opposite is true in his case. I would venture to guess (just a guess) Van Oeyen himself clicked the shutter on his camera half a million times in his long career. Little of his actual work though is credited as he worked as a staff photographer for the majority of his career and only stamped his own photographs when he was freelancing or during short breaks when he worked for himself. He was a staff photographer at NEA and Acme and his works from that period are uncredited.

I have long told people that early sports photographers that we hold in such high esteem today were not looked at as anything special in their own day. I think this adds to their appeal and mystery, sort of like Van Gogh. In 1915 if you had gone looking for the "great" Charles Conlon, you would have likely found him in the corner on the fifth floor of the Evening Telegram building with many of the other employees not even knowing who he was, but today we talk about him in reverent tones like he was a celebrity. I actually think Conlon's work is pretty average after WWI. He turned from a skilled photographer to the Walmart of baseball photography, with volume being the key as his job was to make money, not art. These guys in general were pretty low paid and were just trying to survive like everyone else. There is no evidence that a sports photographer was paid anything above any other photographer at a newspaper, but this would actually make for a fun research project!

There is often huge gaps in these guys lives we know nothing about, probably because they were broke and had to take jobs on assignment photographing local spelling bees and society events for newspapers and were just one of a sea of photographers with badges on their jackets. Even Carl Horner whose baseball photographs we hold in such high regard, as important as he was, was a classically trained portrait photographer and his images of ballplayers are not significantly better than the stacks of other portraits at any antique show in America. Dont get me wrong, he was good. But nobody would mention the name Carl Horner today had he not lucked into an assignment to take photographs of ballplayers in uniform.

What little we know about these guys is what makes this hobby fun and exciting, but not one early baseball photographer transcended his craft in his own time.

Having said all the above, I love these old guys and their cameras from 100 years ago and the fact we know so little about them is typical of photographers, so much of their work was behind a camera, they RARELY posed on the other side of one!

Exactly This.

The obit clearly states he was a photographer. It also clearly states he took pictures of Twain which started it all. The possibility of him then taking ZERO is not a possibility IMO. It is certainly NOT fact/clearly stated. Paul Thompson was a photographer and the photos credited to him/his agency are amazing.

I also feel like as the owner of the company, whether Thompson clicked the shutter or not, he was at the very LEAST responsible for directing the guys who took the photos on what he wanted, hiring the best photographers to represent his name, and in charge of quality control to make sure the finished product was to his specifications. That is a big deal.

RMY pickup
 

Glad I picked this 1912 Marquard up it has become one of my favorites. I wonder what Rube was up too.

Rhys, you make a great point about the waning quality of Conlon's output, and I want to make sure it gets its due. Conlon had five particularly productive years, from 1911-1916. After that, in my view, his worked declined substantially in quality. It may be that the ballplayers with whom he had first developed relationships were retiring or that he was competing increasingly with larger staffs of newspaper photographers, making access and relationship-building more difficult.

I also want to point out that I believe it was the Thompson agency's T205 images that turned Conlon into a portrait photographer. Remarkably, Conlon didn't take a single portrait during his first seven years as a baseball photographer. It's astounding to think about that, but it demonstrates how thoroughly Conlon was driven by his assignments. It was the publication of the T205 images in Spalding's Guide in 1910 and the Guide's desire to continue with non-studio portraiture that led to Conlon's portrait assignments. As good as Cobb sliding into Jimmy Austin is (and it was Conlon's favorite), it's for his portraiture that Conlon is remembered.

This is why you have to read all the threads, this one has the great photo pickups, but it also great info on photographers. Good discussion, thank you all.
Hope those interested in Thompson etc hear of it.

It certainly confirms Paul Thompson was a photographer once and for all. Thanks for obit Andrew!

If anyone has T205 images or any other Great Paul Thomspsons for sale, Please pm me. I am always looking for high end baseball photography. Congrats all of those who picked up photos. Would like to see more!

Good news for collectors
 

At least one major collector from the olden days that I know will be testing the waters soon. I expect there will be plenty of great images to go around in the next few years and I think newer collectors will be surprised at what is out there.

We’ll have to agree to disagree, Ben. Enjoyed the discussion about Thompson.

Fair enough, it def paid off for Me. Thanks for letting go of your Paul Thompson gems. :)

The info you guys are sharing is awesome - most I've learned about photographers in years.

Is there anywhere we can read more about Conlon's life?
Also, common sense tells me that most, if not all, of the T205 portraits were taken by the same photographer, that he was one of the best of his era, and that it's extremely unlikely that he would be unknown. Lacking any other names I will go ahead and call him 'Paul Thompson'.

On December 14 1917, Charles Conlon was elected to the finance committee of the NY Herald-Telegram newspaper’s chapel for the 1918 year. Charles also held the position through 1919, as his December 12 1918 election was uncontested.
Although I have seen him wearing a hat in only one photo; apparently he wore many. ;)

I don't want to discourage your posting, but......

Who are you? You're the only member without a name.

Great thread....this is what makes Net54 the very best place for learning about vintage sports memorabilia. Thanks to all that have shared their knowledge.


Jeff

Hadn't put the actual images of my winnings from Hunt.

Frank Chance by Paul Thompson

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...pshi0cvyuk.jpg

Pair of Wilbert Robinson

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...ps1la07hrw.jpg

Wilbert Robinson by Conlon

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...psx67g2inu.jpg

Bill Klem by Conlon

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...psxmol7s8j.jpg

Tommy Connolly by Conlon

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...ps1shmkcdj.jpg

Another Klem Conlon

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...psj6069spp.jpg

The Cobb Brunners Bread image

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...psvdyxi1re.jpg

I am sure this has already been mentioned somewhere, but "Paul Thompson" somehow had correspondents overseas during WWI and some of the best images I have seen from the Western Front were stamped by him and then by a multitude of censors and foreign entities before they made their way back to the United States. This is why I think his baseball images disappear from 1916/17-1920. Not only do his baseball images disappear, but it appears his company COMPLETELY shifted to the War! I think he either abandoned his company here for the more lucrative job of taking pictures of the war OR his photographers did their duty and left and Thompson rolled with the punches. We will probably never know for sure, but that explains why he was fairly prolific for a while and then stopped only to re-emerge about the time he took those amazing images of Ruth!

Regarding Thompson, I think some detailed analysis could be done to give us a better idea of how many photographers were involved in the T205 project. My initial thought was that most were taken by one person, just because of look, feel, technique. You can look at a Conlon portrait and see characteristics such as depth-of-field, background, etc., that he favored and I'm sure the same could be done for the T205 portraits. We have plenty of examples just from the Hunt auction, plus the great ones that were missing such as Mathewson, Cy Young and a few others.

The other thing that could be done is grouping the non-portrait posed images and looking for 'outliers'. I can already think of two images I'm waiting to arrive that don't look like my other Thompson images;i.e-don't have what I consider the unique 'Thompson' look. Obviously there are images across photographers that look alike, or within a single photographer's work that don't look 'normal' for him, but I'm talking 'in general'. I'll see what I can come up with and post results in a separate thread.

I was really interested when I saw 'Sphere and Ash's initial post about Thompson. I had always thought that the posed images and portraits looked like the works of two separate photographers, but more than two? It's certainly gotten me thinking...and I'm not trying to fight or argue, just learn more.

The McCabes have written two books about Conlon, as you probably know. I contributed a chapter about Conlon to a book titled Subway Series, edited by Tom Finkelpearl, about 15 years ago, that accompanied an exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

I would note a few things about Conlon’s life:

—he fell into baseball photography by accident, thanks to a relationship he had with John B. Foster, later editor of Spalding’s Guide and Secretary of the Giants.

—his work was overwhelmingly driven by the needs of his patrons, The Evening Telegram, Baseball Magazine, and Spalding’s Guide. The only work he ever produced for himself, in my view, were his close-up studies of eyes and hands (disclosure: this is the heart of my photography collection).

—Conlon was Irish, as were a very large number of ballplayers. I would speculate that this helped him gain acceptance into the community he would document for 40 years, but it’s just speculation.

—Conlon had strong personal relationships with several players, particularly McGraw and Matty. Having Matty and McGraw as intermediaries must have made it easier to gain the trust of other ballplayers.

—he had a period of incredible creativity, starting in 1911 when Spalding’s Guide began assigning him to do portraiture, and ending about 1916.

—Conlon entered photo competitions with images of Central Park and bears in zoos. Similarly, he thought his “masterpiece” was Cobb sliding into Austin. He seems to have been unaware of the significance of his baseball portraiture.

—Conlon was a lifelong union man who represented the “Big Six” typographical union as an officer on more than one occasion.

—Conlon photographed baseball for about 40 years, which is an incredibly long time to stay committed to a single subject.

Conlon info
 

Runscott, in addition to Sphere and ash’s info above, I recall once owning an early photography magazine, that had a an article by Conlan about taking baseball/sports photographs. I must have found a cite for it somewhere, possibly the bibliography of the first Mcabe book. Once you have the cite, it should be easier to find than it was 25 years ago.

Thanks for the info. Do you have more on Conlon? Also, can you post a link to your contribution to the Subway Series book which you referenced? I would like to read more.

Tremendous stuff. Definitely stoking the collecting urge fire.