Show your Hunt and RMY photo wins

[Lordstan]

Originally Posted by sphere and ash

I've been thinking about the sentence, "the gold-border portraits are attributed to him because they alone are copyrighted under his name," and it doesn't make sense. Just because you hold a copyright doesn't mean that you're the artist. All it means is that Thompson was the employer or commissioning party.

I think we are saying the same thing here. The story about the boat race clearly shows that photos were published under his name that he did not take.

Originally Posted by sphere and ash

I respectfully disagree with Lordstan that the most one can say is that other photographers took some Thompson agency images. There is no evidence at all that Thompson took a single image after he started his agency. Quite to the contrary, The New York Times made it a point to note that Thompson was not an "expert cameraman" and that the success of his business depended on "able associates."

Well. I can understand your point. I think we are talking about semantics here. Having success "depending on able body associates" is not the same as not taking any photos at all. If he took only 1%, or for that matter even only 1, of the photos then the statement in the Obit is still true. I hold by my conclusion in that there is no doubt that others took photos for him, but there is nothing stated or implied that he never took ANY.

All of this is, of course, focusing on the minutiae of semantics. The reality is that Thompson photos are pretty great regardless of who took them. Considering that many seem to share the same aesthetic, it is likely that he had one main photographer who did the bulk of his work.

[prewarsports]

Van Oeyen is my favorite and is essentially the opposite of what we have been discussing here on Paul Thompson and George Grantham Bain. Louis Van Oeyen was a skilled photographer who never outsourced that I am aware of and in fact, the opposite is true in his case. I would venture to guess (just a guess) Van Oeyen himself clicked the shutter on his camera half a million times in his long career. Little of his actual work though is credited as he worked as a staff photographer for the majority of his career and only stamped his own photographs when he was freelancing or during short breaks when he worked for himself. He was a staff photographer at NEA and Acme and his works from that period are uncredited.

I have long told people that early sports photographers that we hold in such high esteem today were not looked at as anything special in their own day. I think this adds to their appeal and mystery, sort of like Van Gogh. In 1915 if you had gone looking for the "great" Charles Conlon, you would have likely found him in the corner on the fifth floor of the Evening Telegram building with many of the other employees not even knowing who he was, but today we talk about him in reverent tones like he was a celebrity. I actually think Conlon's work is pretty average after WWI. He turned from a skilled photographer to the Walmart of baseball photography, with volume being the key as his job was to make money, not art. These guys in general were pretty low paid and were just trying to survive like everyone else. There is no evidence that a sports photographer was paid anything above any other photographer at a newspaper, but this would actually make for a fun research project!

There is often huge gaps in these guys lives we know nothing about, probably because they were broke and had to take jobs on assignment photographing local spelling bees and society events for newspapers and were just one of a sea of photographers with badges on their jackets. Even Carl Horner whose baseball photographs we hold in such high regard, as important as he was, was a classically trained portrait photographer and his images of ballplayers are not significantly better than the stacks of other portraits at any antique show in America. Dont get me wrong, he was good. But nobody would mention the name Carl Horner today had he not lucked into an assignment to take photographs of ballplayers in uniform.

What little we know about these guys is what makes this hobby fun and exciting, but not one early baseball photographer transcended his craft in his own time.

Having said all the above, I love these old guys and their cameras from 100 years ago and the fact we know so little about them is typical of photographers, so much of their work was behind a camera, they RARELY posed on the other side of one!

[sphere and ash]

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.

[bgar3]

This is why you have to read all the threads, this one has the great photo pickups, but it also great info on photographers. Good discussion, thank you all.
Hope those interested in Thompson etc hear of it.

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by bgar3

This is why you have to read all the threads, this one has the great photo pickups, but it also great info on photographers. Good discussion, thank you all.
Hope those interested in Thompson etc hear of it.

It certainly confirms Paul Thompson was a photographer once and for all. Thanks for obit Andrew!

If anyone has T205 images or any other Great Paul Thomspsons for sale, Please pm me. I am always looking for high end baseball photography. Congrats all of those who picked up photos. Would like to see more!

[bgar3]

At least one major collector from the olden days that I know will be testing the waters soon. I expect there will be plenty of great images to go around in the next few years and I think newer collectors will be surprised at what is out there.

[sphere and ash]

We’ll have to agree to disagree, Ben. Enjoyed the discussion about Thompson.

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by sphere and ash

We’ll have to agree to disagree, Ben. Enjoyed the discussion about Thompson.

Fair enough, it def paid off for Me. Thanks for letting go of your Paul Thompson gems.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by sphere and ash

We’ll have to agree to disagree, Ben. Enjoyed the discussion about Thompson.

I don't want to discourage your posting, but......

Who are you? You're the only member without a name.

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by Lordstan

I think we are saying the same thing here. The story about the boat race clearly shows that photos were published under his name that he did not take.



Well. I can understand your point. I think we are talking about semantics here. Having success "depending on able body associates" is not the same as not taking any photos at all. If he took only 1%, or for that matter even only 1, of the photos then the statement in the Obit is still true. I hold by my conclusion in that there is no doubt that others took photos for him, but there is nothing stated or implied that he never took ANY.

Exactly This.

The obit clearly states he was a photographer. It also clearly states he took pictures of Twain which started it all. The possibility of him then taking ZERO is not a possibility IMO. It is certainly NOT fact/clearly stated. Paul Thompson was a photographer and the photos credited to him/his agency are amazing.

[prewarsports]

I also feel like as the owner of the company, whether Thompson clicked the shutter or not, he was at the very LEAST responsible for directing the guys who took the photos on what he wanted, hiring the best photographers to represent his name, and in charge of quality control to make sure the finished product was to his specifications. That is a big deal.

[Kingcobb]

Glad I picked this 1912 Marquard up it has become one of my favorites. I wonder what Rube was up too.