I picked the early nineties to really dive into baseball cards. You know, the biggest explosion of overproduction in the hobby’s long history? Nothing from those days is worth anything monetarily, but I have a lot of great memories of collecting, from mammoth card shows to card shops on every other block to stopping at every K-Mart on road trips. I didn’t own a camera at the time, and never dreamed I’d become interested in photography, but the allure of sports cards is all about that timely image on the front, sometimes capturing some amazing moment or an iconic visage in a timeless photo. The ninety-three Upper Deck set featured an insert set of cards of special images by Walter Iooss, Jr., and that was my introduction to the name. Knowing the photographer for the image in the card was unheard of in the hobby, but for this small set of twenty-seven cards, I could see why. His imagery was a cut above. It wasn’t the best card in the set, but I keep his beat-up portrait (seen above) of Phillies great Darren Daulton handy to this day.
Bonus video link: Charlie Rose interviews Iooss in 1999. I love what he says about how he would shoot sporting events and not know the score because he was so zeroed in on images. I know what he means from my own concert shoots. Sometimes I don’t even hear the music. I was awestruck at Iooss’ Michael Jordan anecdote, too.
