Carl Horner Photographs

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Posted By: runscott

I think almost all pre-wwi card collectors have heard of both CONLON and HORNER. Horner was a great portrait photographer, but there were others out there who were just as good. Horner is more well-known than the others simply because he took more photographs of ML baseball players - virtually all of them. Take a look at the Boston Beaneater cabinets from the 1890's - I will argue that the photographer of those did much better work than Horner. Same for the Boston Red Stockings cdv's from the 1870's. And these guys had a tougher time than Horner did in the early 1900's.

Conlon is more popular because he took photographs that involved more than simply a head, and in an age where that wasn't so easy to do, he was a master. He also took phenomenal action shots, which was especially difficult - just look at the famous Cobb/Austin photo as an example. If you want just a hint of how great Conlon really was, pick up "Baseball's Golden Age". It just became available in soft-cover, but you'll want the hard-cover permanent copy.

Having said all that, I would still gladly pay a premium for a nice hardcover copy of Horner's studio portraits.