andrew's conlons
Thank you, Andrew. The portrait of Grant is like the Thompson head shots. They used those big ol' honking cameras and you could count the freckles on Grant's face.
Yes, thinner paper on the older prints.
N.E.A., which supplied photos, among other things, to hundreds of newspapers at the time we are talking about, shot images of ballplayers for their clients. Too many of them look as though they were shot during a sandstorm. It wasn't an art project, they just wanted something they could print in a newspaper. N.E.A. wasn't going to hire Ansel Adams to shoot Red Faber (which is kind of a shame, isn't it?)
Maybe that's all Conlon's clients were asking of him. By the way, one of Conlon's biggest customers for his contact prints was Wm. Kunzel, who shot pictures for the Detroit News. The Conlon prints in the Harwell Collection in Detroit came to Harwell by way of Kunzel.
The McCabes, who are true Conlon lovers, admit in the preface to one of their books that focus could be a programmatic for Conlon.
I have a hunch that Conlon was self taught, feeling his way along as he went.
lumberjack
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