Stephens, St. Louis, American League, from the White Border series (T206) for the American Tobacco Company 1909 - 1911

This baseball card of Stephens of St. Louis was made for the American Tobacco Company sometime around 1910 using a lithographic print. I’m really drawn to the way the ochre ground bleeds into the emerald, it's almost sickly, but also kinda nice! The texture of the print is flat but the image has depth. I love how the dark tones in the glove contrast with the lighter gray uniform, and the way the small ‘L’ sits there like a misplaced hieroglyph, hinting at a strange kind of symbolism. You know, there's a whole history of art embedded here... it reminds me a little of the early portraits of, say, Manet or Degas. There’s something about the blurriness in the lithograph that lends it a dreamlike quality, like a faded memory. It's like, what are we really looking at when we look at a picture? I guess we’re looking at time.