International News Photos

[thecatspajamas]

I'm coming to this a bit late, but here's my thoughts on this particular photo. Let me preface everything by emphasizing the need to analyze each photo based on its own indicators. This is not a blanket analysis to be applied to any photo that you may see with "similar stamping" on the back.

First of all, the image is definitely from 1922. You can tell the year based on the New York Giants player's uniform in the background on the left. That style of socks was only used by the Giants in 1922 and 1923. In 1923, the jersey had a large NY emblem on the player's left side of the chest (your right when facing him) that is absent from this player's uniform. The 1922 Giants jersey did not have this large emblem on the chest. You could further narrow the date to a few possibilities by looking at when the Giants played the Yankees in 1922: The World Series. So that narrows the date to some time between October 4 and 8 of 1922.

That's when the image was produced, meaning that's when the photographer looking on the scene depicted pressed the button on his camera. This is not the same as when the print was produced. The two are different, whether by hours, days, or years, and you would do well to remember that just because a photo depicts a scene (image) from a particular date, the physical photograph itself (print) could have been produced years later, and was not necessarily developed from the original negative. It is often much more difficult (or impossible) to determine exactly when a photograph (print) was produced, even if you can accurately date the scene (image) depicted in the photo.

To get an idea of when the physical photo (print) was produced, you have to look at other evidence. In this case, without being able to examine the print itself, the primary evidence is on the back of the photo. Here you have two bits of information. 1) The typed information at the top, which identifies the subjects in the foreground and gives the year the photo was taken. 2) The news service stamping. Since 1) tells us when the photo was taken, but not when the print was produced, we have to rely on 2) for that information.

As others have pointed out, the International News stamping style used on the back dates to 1940-1948. The biggest tell is the second line on the scroll portion which reads "A UNIT OF KING FEATURES SYND." While there is a similar stamping style with that line on the scroll that was used by the Chicago Bureau into the 1950's, the "235 East 46th Street, New York, N.Y." address together with the King Features text line is exclusive to this particular stamping style.

With the information present, that's as close as I can date the photo: It is a print produced between 1940 and 1948 of an image that was taken by the photographer during the 1922 World Series.

If you want to get into what that means as far as a "Type" classification, it would be either a Type 2 or a Type 4 since the print was developed at a date more than 2 years removed from when the image was shot. The difference between the two would be whether it was developed from the original negative (Type 2) or a copy negative or wire photo process (Type 4). It's hard to tell from the small scan shown in the eBay listing, but the image looks to be quite sharp and clear, which leads me to believe it was developed from the original negative rather than a copy negative.

As to why the photo could have been issued by the International News at a date so far removed from the original event, there are plenty of possibilities, but the strongest in my mind would be the failing health or death of Ruth himself in 1948. Newspapers nationwide were publishing stories dealing with the many grand accomplishments of The Bambino, and a sharp image of him in his prime with the Yankees in the 1922 World Series would have been prime fodder for accompanying any of those stories. It was an opportunity for the news agency to get paid again for an image that they already had on file, without the additional expense of hiring a photographer. Since these news agencies were in the business of selling the use of their images, if they could make additional money off of an image they already had in stock, you better believe they jumped at any opportunity to do so! It is quite common to see photos of players in their prime released years later in conjunction with their death for use in obituaries and related stories.

As for the question of whether these news agencies kept negatives or prints on file, the answer for any given image could be either or both. However, it is very unlikely that a print would have been produced in 1922, filed away without any stamping, then pulled back out in the 1940's, stamped with the 1940's stamp style, and then sent out to subscribers. The scenario of a negative of the image having been produced in 1922, filed away for 20 years, then pulled out in the 1940's to produce a new print of the photo which was then stamped with the then-current 1940's stamp style and sent out to subscribers is much more likely.

Wow, that explanation went much longer than I intended! Hopefully that helps to show at least some of what can go into accurately dating a photo (print) as well as the image it depicts, and shows that you cannot just apply a blanket analysis to all photos with a "similar" style of stamping on the back. For the stamping styles used by the various news agencies, you would do very well to pick up a copy of Henry Yee and Marshall Fogel's book "A Portrait of Baseball Photography" which has numerous dated examples of the various agencies' stamping styles as well as a wealth of information about the history of baseball photography and photographers, as well as the photographs themselves. I agree with the sentiments of others that, first and foremost, you should collect photographs that have an image that appeals to you above and beyond the value of the physical print itself. But if you're getting into identifying "Type 1" photos and trying to identify when the print itself was produced, you really should add that book to your library.