'Visions Of Victory' At Joslyn Art Museum

OMAHA, NEB.

:The worlds of photography and sports have evolved hand-in-hand for more than a century, each moving from relatively primitive states to today's more sophisticated status. The challenge of freezing a moment in time, especially as applied to fast-moving athletes, has long intrigued both professional and amateur photographers.

Through their evocative images we can relive dramatic moments depicting the will to win of famous and not-so-famous competitors, as recorded by famous and not-so-famous photographers. Their lenses have captured many of the greatest moments in sports history.

"Visions of Victory Presented by Mutual of Omaha" was initially organized for presentation at the 1996 centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta as a tribute to 100 years of the international competition and the achievements of sports photographers.

Currently on view at the Joslyn Art Museum through August 13 and at the Springfield (Mo.) Art Museum, September 16-November 12, the exhibition is a treat for those who love sports and those who appreciate high-quality photography. The 147 images from all over the world underscore the fascination of capturing athletic motion on film, along with the drama inherent in a variety of sports.

When originally displayed ten years ago, as "Visions of Victory: A Century of Sports Photography," the exhibition marked a new direction in the art of photographic presentation when all prints were digitally reproduced from their original images using state-of-the-art technology. They look good in the Joslyn's galleries.

The exhibition is sufficiently comprehensive to include views of a virtual Who's Who of the most famous athletes of the Twentieth Century. They are portrayed most often in action, but occasionally in moments of quiet reflection.

Photography was invented in 1845; sports photography dates to 1878, when British photographer Eadweard Muybridge took his famous views of horses in motion. As the popularity of sports in America accelerated after the turn of the century, especially during the "Golden Age of Sports" in the 1920s, photographers were there to turn action into history. Life magazine and later Sports Illustrated gave great impetus to framing sports moments forever in high-quality images. Until the mid-1960s, most sports photos were in black and white; after that, full-color images became the norm.

A number of remarkable photographs in the exhibition date to the period before World War I, when photography came of age. They range from images of genteel, gowned women golfing or playing tennis to a panoramic view of the crowd and horses in action at a race track by Alfred Stieglitz to social reformer Lewis Hines's shot of a pickup baseball game in a crowded, messy Boston tenement alley.

One of the earliest photographs in the exhibition, "Double Jump," 1885, shows multiple images of a young nude man hopping from a standing start. It was taken by the great painter Thomas Eakins, whose extensive use of photographic studies contributed to the psychological intensity of his meticulous canvases. Eakins helped bring pioneering motion-studies photographer Muybridge to the University of Pennsylvania, where the two scientifically inclined artists worked together on various projects. Today, Eakins's photographs are recognized as among the finest of his day.

True baseball fans will be familiar with "Ty Cobb sliding into third base," 1910, a remarkably early image taken by Charles Martin Conlon showing the fiercely competitive "Georgia Peach" kicking up a cloud of dirt as he safely gains his objective. "I always went into the bag full speed, feet first," Cobb recalled. "I had sharp spikes on my shoes. If the baseman stood where he had no business to be and got hurt, that was his fault." That zeal to win, along with a remarkable .367 batting average during his 24-year major league career, earned Cobb the honor of being among the first players elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame in 1936.