Fred Sommer 1975

Mike Mandel’s 1975 photograph, "Fred Sommer," is a black and white portrait that resembles a baseball card. The image is of a man named Fred Sommer, posed with a baseball glove and wearing a cap with the letter "A" on it, a common baseball cap for the time. The image’s style and composition reference the baseball card, a form of popular visual culture. The photograph is a part of Mandel's larger series of works, "The Catalog," which explores the power of photography to shape our perception of the world by manipulating and recontextualizing everyday objects.