Charles Conlon photos with Underwood & Underwood stamp

[Hankphenom]

Conlon was a freelancer. He sold his stuff to practically every baseball publication there was. I would assume that he either took these photos for Underwood and Underwood, or that they were serving as syndicators for them.

[drc]

The big news services got their photos from many places. They had their own photographers but also bought and distributed others.

[repsher]

So would you say these photos would be classified as Type 1 Conlon photos or Type 1 U&U photos that just happen to have Conlon images? Or something else?

[drc]

You could call it a U&U photo shot by Conlon.

[repsher]

I just had another thought about these photos. I now believe that U&U had Conlon photos that they then took a picture of, creating a copy negative. Then they could make as many copies as they want to distribute.

I came up with this because you can see a serial number in the U&U photos, when in fact the image on the Conlon negatives would be much larger.

So this would make these photos Type IV even though they are of the era? And this now makes me question a lot of the photos in my collection.

[Hankphenom]

That would make them Type III, contemporary but not from the original negative. I would guess you're right about that, but its also possible that U&U bought the original negatives and scratched the serial numbers in them, which would make those prints Type I. Probably not though, as they look to have slightly diminished resolution. More likely they made a negative from their Type I original, then scratched the number in that to make prints from. Type IIIs are much more collectible than IIs, in my experience, and Henry agreed that with hindsight he would have switched II and III to better reflect the vintage characteristic and more desirability as collectibles of the IIIs.

[drc]

At sale, you can call something a vintage 1920 (example year) photo without commenting on its originality. If you aren't sure, you aren't sure.

Btw, the resolution on the old photo looks pretty good.

[horzverti]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

That would make them Type III, contemporary but not from the original negative. I would guess you're right about that, but its also possible that U&U bought the original negatives and scratched the serial numbers in them, which would make those prints Type I. Probably not though, as they look to have slightly diminished resolution. More likely they made a negative from their Type I original, then scratched the number in that to make prints from. Type IIIs are much more collectible than IIs, in my experience, and Henry agreed that with hindsight he would have switched II and III to better reflect the vintage characteristic and more desirability as collectibles of the IIIs.

Repsher offered up a positive image of the original Conlon negative (courtesy of John Rogers' archive) to compare to the photo he purchased. Rogers' original neg was used to create the positive image that was posted for comparison to Repsher's piece. So the U & U serial number or id data is not on the original neg. Conlon distributed his photos, not his negatives. If a news service received an original Conlon photo and wanted to add their own serial number onto the original...then they would have to create their own neg by taking a photo of the original photo. This would embed their written data onto their newly created copy neg. If you were to come across a Conlon image with the info actually written on the front and not embedded into the image, then you may have an original Conlon photo created from the original neg...and it would most likely have Conlon's stamp and/or writing on the back.

So, what you have here are photos created from a copy neg. Nice, crisp images, but not original Conlons.

By the way, good eye friend!