Tobacco company Photographers

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Posted By: Joe_G.

Thanks for the replies but I think I need to clarify the questions a bit.

The 1st question was simply verifying that it is appropriate to consider an Old Judge card or similar as a small piece of an imperial cabinet. Barry, your (and Mark Rucker's) early VCBC articles on photos are well done, I've referenced them many times together with David Rudd's work. But back to the card discussion, an Old Judge card is 1/24th of a large albenum photo. An uncut sheet would fall into the category of an imperial cabinet hence my statement that an Old Judge is a small piece of an imperial cabinet.

We also know it required a skilled photographer(s) to develop such photos which led into my second question as to whether the tobacco companies hired out all the work or hired some skilled photographers to work for them under their roof.

I did and do realize that the tobacco companies used many other studios to take the original photos for them. We know that Joseph Hall took all the 1887 '0' numbered photos for Goodwin & Company (505 different poses split amongst 117 different subjects). And then in subsequent years, many other studios were hired to take the oringal photos and send them to Goodwin. My question is whether Goodwin & Company themselves then took these photos, arranged them into a 6x4 matrix, doctored them up with advertising/numbering/player identification, re-photographed, developed, mounted the imperial photo onto a cardboard backing and lastly cut it into individual baseball cards? Or did the tobacco companies hire all this work out to Studios? That in essence is my question. Everyone assumes an Old Judge is the product of Goodwin & Co. but was all the work contracted to possibly a local studio or two? It sure would be neat to know who did this as we give lot's of credit to the few studios that are recognized to produce 19th century baseball items. But the largest volume of material, N172s & N173s for example, were produced . . . . . where?

Best Regards,
Joe Gonsowski