Charles Conlon: An Unknown Baseball Photographer

1839, when louis Daguerre announced that he had perfected the photography process named after him, softball games spread all over the east coast of the United States. At the beginning of the 20th century, with the appearance of hand-held cameras and a large number of black and white newspapers and magazines, this sport gradually became a national pastime. Charles M.Conlon was born in 1868. He was a proofreader of new york Telegraph. He began to take photography as a hobby. Encouraged by an editor, he began to go to the baseball field frequently in the first 10 year of the 20th century. He soon took a large number of charming intimate photos of telegrams and famous baseball publications, including Sports News and Spalding Guide, with a Graflex camera. By the time the last photo was taken in the early 1940s, Kang Long had become one of the most important documentary producers in baseball.

Photography developed rapidly and thoroughly after Kang Long died in 1945. The technology of camera, film and lens is advanced, and color pictures can be seen everywhere in glossy publications such as Sports Illustrated. The glass panels of Kang Long and other baseball pioneers (including Louis Van Owen, Carl Horner and George Grantham Bain) were downgraded to newspaper morgues.

However, Kang Long's works were rediscovered in 1990. Sports News obtained the surviving glass negatives shot by Conlon, and hired Constance McCabe, the photo protector, to print and print the photos. She told these things to her brother Neil, a baseball researcher in Los Angeles, who found himself "shocked" by Kang Long's art and anonymity. 1993, brother and sister published The Golden Age of Baseball: A Photo of Charles M Conlon (played by Harry abrams). This book is a revelation, a time machine in the era of wooden baseball field, day sports meeting and legal billiards. The Golden Age is visually equivalent to Modern Times by Lawrence Ritter, and it is also a pioneering oral history of professional baseball in its early days.

Roger Angel, a senior contributor to The New Yorker, called it "the best collection of baseball photos ever published"

Nearly 20 years later, Neil and constance mccabe jointly published the second volume. Large-scale exhibition: Golden Age baseball photos of Charles M Conlon (abrams). This sequel, published to commemorate the founding anniversary of 125 sports news, may be better than the original. Bobby Ruth, walter johnson and Bob Ferrer all performed well, but there is still a lot of room for stars like Walter Cruise, George McQueen and Paul Krichel. Their careers have been forgotten, but from the perspective of Kang Long, their similarities have not been forgotten.

In our photo article, I learned more about some themes of Kanglong.

David davies is the author of The Shepherd's Battle in the Jungle, which tells the story of London 1908 Olympic Marathon, and will be published by St Martin's Press in June 20 12.