Harold Allen 1975

Mike Mandel made this photographic print, Harold Allen, at an unknown date. It's a black and white image of a baseball player holding a bat, posed, and printed as a baseball card. It's giving me some outsider art vibes. I wonder, what was Mandel thinking when he took the picture? Maybe he was contemplating the idea of the hero, or reflecting on how we turn ordinary people into icons through images. It's interesting how this photograph mimics a baseball card, but it's not quite right. It makes you think about the surface of an image, the way it can both reveal and conceal. The picture isn’t slick or heroic but it captures a real person trying to be both at the same time. The name at the bottom of the card confirms that this is someone real, a person elevated to icon.