Show your Hunt and RMY photo wins

[horzverti]

Originally Posted by Runscott

The info you guys are sharing is awesome - most I've learned about photographers in years.

Is there anywhere we can read more about Conlon's life?
Also, common sense tells me that most, if not all, of the T205 portraits were taken by the same photographer, that he was one of the best of his era, and that it's extremely unlikely that he would be unknown. Lacking any other names I will go ahead and call him 'Paul Thompson'.

On December 14 1917, Charles Conlon was elected to the finance committee of the NY Herald-Telegram newspaper’s chapel for the 1918 year. Charles also held the position through 1919, as his December 12 1918 election was uncontested.
Although I have seen him wearing a hat in only one photo; apparently he wore many.

[ibuysportsephemera]

Great thread....this is what makes Net54 the very best place for learning about vintage sports memorabilia. Thanks to all that have shared their knowledge.


Jeff

[btcarfagno]

Hadn't put the actual images of my winnings from Hunt.

Frank Chance by Paul Thompson



Pair of Wilbert Robinson



Wilbert Robinson by Conlon



Bill Klem by Conlon



Tommy Connolly by Conlon



Another Klem Conlon



The Cobb Brunners Bread image

[prewarsports]

I am sure this has already been mentioned somewhere, but "Paul Thompson" somehow had correspondents overseas during WWI and some of the best images I have seen from the Western Front were stamped by him and then by a multitude of censors and foreign entities before they made their way back to the United States. This is why I think his baseball images disappear from 1916/17-1920. Not only do his baseball images disappear, but it appears his company COMPLETELY shifted to the War! I think he either abandoned his company here for the more lucrative job of taking pictures of the war OR his photographers did their duty and left and Thompson rolled with the punches. We will probably never know for sure, but that explains why he was fairly prolific for a while and then stopped only to re-emerge about the time he took those amazing images of Ruth!

[Runscott]

Regarding Thompson, I think some detailed analysis could be done to give us a better idea of how many photographers were involved in the T205 project. My initial thought was that most were taken by one person, just because of look, feel, technique. You can look at a Conlon portrait and see characteristics such as depth-of-field, background, etc., that he favored and I'm sure the same could be done for the T205 portraits. We have plenty of examples just from the Hunt auction, plus the great ones that were missing such as Mathewson, Cy Young and a few others.

The other thing that could be done is grouping the non-portrait posed images and looking for 'outliers'. I can already think of two images I'm waiting to arrive that don't look like my other Thompson images;i.e-don't have what I consider the unique 'Thompson' look. Obviously there are images across photographers that look alike, or within a single photographer's work that don't look 'normal' for him, but I'm talking 'in general'. I'll see what I can come up with and post results in a separate thread.

I was really interested when I saw 'Sphere and Ash's initial post about Thompson. I had always thought that the posed images and portraits looked like the works of two separate photographers, but more than two? It's certainly gotten me thinking...and I'm not trying to fight or argue, just learn more.