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.
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