Hello, Anthony Linck

I met Anthony Linck in a rather strange way.

My wife and I were at the weekly Bridge Street Auction event in Plattsburgh, NY.  It was early 2005, I honestly don't recall the exact month.  We enjoyed the auction crew and their family atmosphere, good people and personalities.  We were perusing all the things that were to be auctioned for that day.  Among them were estate items, as was usual.

The bulk of that day's auction seemed to be photography things.  Quite a variety of things.  There were boxes of slides, all labeled.  Boxes and boxes of prints, of all sizes.  Negatives.  Assorted antique cameras.  And large exhibition style poster sized prints on backboards, most with small title tags stuck on the back.

All of the photo items had one name in common.  A. Linck

At the time, I had no idea who A. Linck had been.  I was impressed for sure.  It was obvious he was a great photographer.  The images that passed before my eyes, as I sorted through as many of the items as I could in the time before the auction started, were varied in subject and location.  Most of the images were pictures of life.  Children playing, neighborhood streets, people doing people things.  Fire trucks, airplanes.  Several groups of action things, like sports, and house fires.  There were others, older ones.  From World War II.  Ships, soldiers, vehicles, warplanes.  It was all things that I loved.

I wished I could have bid on all the things there.  I was definitely coveting all the coolness.

When the auction started, I did bid on many of the lots.  Unfortunately, the lots were extremely large groups of the collection all at once.  I was very disappointed, as I just didn't have the money to compete with the art and antique dealers who were in attendance.  I had nickels and dimes, they had hundred dollar bills.

I did get a few items.  At the start of the group of gallery pieces, the auctioneer did a buyer's choice section.  Where we bid for choice of the prints.  I didn't win the bid, but I was second highest.  Maybe 10 or 20 dollars.  An antique dealer went and cherry picked some of the best images.  Walking off with four or five of them.  Then, I got to pick as many as I could afford, and liked.  At the price that I had bid.  I only had two minutes to rifle through them all, and there were at least fifty of them up there, leaning in stacks.  I chose three. 

Two 25 x 30 print boards, and one smaller 15 x 24 (?).  One large one was an air to air shot of three Mooney airplanes, in a staggered line.  I think it might have been a promotional shot for the Mooney aircraft company perhaps.  The second large one was an aerial shot of Manhattan.  This was Manhattan from maybe the late 1940's.  Very, very cool picture.  You can see where the Twin Towers would fit into the photo someday, I had wanted a better lit version of the same picture, but the dealer had gotten it.  This one is a little more in shadow, but I still love it. 

The last, smaller one, is perhaps my favorite.  It's got the gallery title card taped to the back, it says "Take-off moment on the aircraft carrier 'Leyte'"  It's a tightly framed shot, showing a launch person with his arms in the "take-off" position you see the Navy guys do, just before the jet roars from the deck.  Except this is no jet, dominating the bottom third of the photo, is the nose and wings of an F8F Bearcat.  I know what it is, because handwritten on the back of the board it says "Grumman F8F Bearcat Takeoff, Aircraft Carrier 'Leyte'"  Perhaps half redundant when you have the title tag, but I like it.  I like to think that Mr. Linck wrote that there for me to read. 

EDIT:  I just found out there was no such aircraft carrier in the US Navy.  "Leyte" refers to the battle for the island of Leyte in the Pacific.  The gallery tag is quite misleading!

I learned a little that day about Mr. Anthony Linck.  Not from his obituary, which had run in December of 2004 in the local paper.  But from all the photos he took, all the care with which he catalogued them.  Felt like I had shaken his hand and had a long chat with him.

You can Google Anthony Linck, maybe look under Tony Linck.  In a nutshell, he was born in 1919 in upstate NY.  He loved photography and flying, Mooney airplanes in particular.  He was a Life Magazine staff photographer from 1945 to 1954.  After which he went freelance, doing aircraft and industrial photography.  He was married to a girl named Marie in 1950, who died 9 months before he did. 

It's a long life, and a large pile of photos that I saw that day.  I was saddened that no one in his family had wanted all the things he had left behind.  But that was unfortunately common to see there at the Auction. 

I was glad I was there that day. 

Cheers.  Rest in peace Tony, it was nice to have met you.