Henry Yee Photos and Photos in General - Skeptical

[Hankphenom]

As dealer (small-time, compared to Henry and others) in old photos the past ten years, here's the math I've done in my head to try and figure out the answer to this question. There were between one and several hundred copies of a given photo printed at the time (type 1), depending on whether it was made for a specific publication for exclusive use or sent to multiple publications belonging to a syndicate for whom the photographer did work. In the case of syndicated photos, editors had to decide whether to keep the photo as a file copy, or throw it away after its original ephemeral use. In the case of a great photographers taking a classic shot of a renowned subject, one can assume the instance of keeping a file copy was higher than for an obscure player in an ordinary shot from a meaningless game. But then even the classic photos would have been subject to the ravages of time, including purging files for lack of storage space, or disposal upon the demise of the publication. So that leaves the remaining file copies in newspaper and magazine archives that have survived the years. How many of those archives are there? We'll find out in the next few years as they are sold off one after another for cash in the probably futile attempt of print publications to stay alive. We've seen several archives come to market recently, and I'm sure there will be at least several more. So what's the bottom line on all this? I'm guessing that there are no more than a handful of original Type 1 copies in existence of all but a few images, and that many really are one or two or three of a kind. I've seen a lot of photos over the years, either in person or in auction catalogs, and I don't remember a lot of redundancies. The only ones that come to mind are Brooklyn and Yankee team pictures from the 50s, and it's understandable that those would have been saved by most photo editors. Having said all this, it occurs to me that John Rogers would probably be the best person in the world to answer the question. John?
Hank Thomas