The Passion of Former Days: sports

Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts

21 October, 2014

19th Century Baseball Players "in Action"

Cards depicting professional baseball players began to be produced in the 1880s, as a sub-variety of cigarette card. Though some of these were simple head-and-shoulder portraits, there was a greater interest in images of baseball players actually playing baseball. The problem was that camera technology at the time was not quite up to the task of actually capturing action (at least, not without extremely specialized equipment like Muybridge's). The compromise was these posed studio portraits. Baseball players would pose as if throwing, catching, or batting balls suspended on wire. Most, it must be said, were not natural models.

Large numbers of these early baseball portraits are held by the Library of Congress, which has over 2,000 early baseball cards (photographs, lithographs, and half-tone), and the New York Public Library, which holds many cabinet card-mounted versions of the same photographs used for the mass-produced cigarette cards (see, for instance, this mounted print and this cigarette card). This post draws mainly from the higher quality card-mounted prints from the NYPL, but interested viewers are highly advised to check out both collections--even for a non-baseball fan like myself, they are tremendous fun.

New York Public Library

Deacon McGuire, Philadelphia Quakers, 1886-1888. Source

New York Public Library

Unidentified player. Source

New York Public Library

Jack Clements. Source

Studio Portraits with Bicycles

The other month we had a look at people and their bicycles--outdoors, riding, or posed close to a ride. This natural look, however, isn't the only one in the history of cyclist photographry. Particularly in the 19th century, people with an affection for their bicycles have used them as props in professional studio portraits as well.

State Library of Queensland

A young man in a studio with a penny-farthing, Queensland, Australia, 19th C. Source

Smithsonian Institution

Artist Elihu Vedder in the studio with his bicycle, ca. 1910. Source

State Library of New South Wales

Schoolteacher Miss Marley, Narraburra, New South Wales, Australia, ca. 1910. Source

Awkward Team Photos

I love old group portraits. I love to look at the various expressions, the variety of character captured in that fraction of a second.

I'm not a sports person, but I have to admit to taking special pleasure in old team portraits, especially from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Why? Because so many of them are just so awkward. The poses are usually directed and usually strained. Most of the people clearly feel uncomfortable and don't want to be there. Some of them look away from the camera or simply glare at it. A couple usually look about to doze off. There's usually one person genuinely smiling, and/or someone trying out their "sexy" look . I don't know why you see this more in team portraits than others, but gee I enjoy it (especially when paired with the old uniforms!)

Musee McCord Museum

The Shamrock hockey team, Montreal, 1899 (hockey players just don't wear skintight shirts anymore!). Source

Library of Congress

The New York Metropolitans, 1882 (that 'lying on the floor' pose is a common one in old team portraits, and practically guarentees awkwardness). Source

Miami University Library

Women tend to be better with non-awkward facial expressions... but they sometimes get posed even more awkwardly than the men. Miami women's basketball team, 1911. Source

By Bicycle

Photographs of people with bicycles, from the 1890s to 1940s.

National Library of Australia

Women with bicycles on an Australian beach, ca. 1900. Source

Deseronto Archives

Two men cycling on a dirt road, Ontario, Canada, 1903. Source

Library of Congress

Cyclist Joseph Fogler with another fellow in an awkward trying-to-stay-on-bicycle pose, 1913. Source

Adventures in Wintersport

The end of another Winter Olympics! I really love the Winter Olympics-- for a lot of reasons (one of the big ones being I'm Canadian and we're good at them, haha), but most relevantly because they get us to watch and actually care about the kinds of winter sports most people never even think about otherwise. This blog has already covered such standard sports as skiing, skating, and hockey, so this post is dedicated to those 'weird' ones (plus a few classics I couldn't resist... plus a few winter sports just too weird for the Olympics!).

We'll start with one of the odder (and one of my favourites): aerials! I have no idea when aerials became a 'proper' sport, but these fellows were certainly doing an early version of it in the 1950s!

J. R. Eyerman, LIFE © Time Inc.

Idaho, US, 1952. Source

J. R. Eyerman, LIFE © Time Inc.

Skier Jack Reddish, Idaho, 1952. Source

J. R. Eyerman, LIFE © Time Inc.

Skier Stein Eriksen, no date. Source

Skiing in Norway

Photographs of people skiing in Norway in the 1910s and 1920s, taken by Kristian Berge, the same amateur photographer whose landscape photographs were featured in this post.