Night Game, 1946 (Bill Dickey)

The SPORT Gallery is dedicated to shedding light on the developed but widely under-appreciated art of sports photography. The emphasis is on sports photos that convey the rich history and tradition, as well as the elemental artistry, of sport. The Sport Gallery brings to life the greatest sport moments and personalities of past and present in our unique collection of classic sports photographs. Our goal is to bridge the gap between the previously distinct worlds of high-end sports memorabilia and fine art photography, with a great focus on the highly artistic quality of sports photography, celebrating the talent and vision of some of the world’s finest shooters, who happen to have shot sports, either as vocation or merely avocation.

Our photographs are derived from the SPORT Collection, anchored by the SPORT Magazine Photographic Archive. The SPORT Collection honors the craft of sports photography by reviving iconic images in the form of collectible pieces of fine art. Focusing on images that are exquisite and rare, selected works have been released as hand-crafted and open-edition series. Every piece is manufactured using archival materials and inks to exacting, museum standards. The SPORT Collection comprises some 250,000 images – everything from color transparencies and black and white negatives from the 1920s to the 1990s, with the best work concentrated in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Images by SPORT magazine’s esteemed staff photographers form much of the archive, but many thousands of images are from internationally acclaimed freelancers, including the unparalleled hockey photography of Toronto’s Harold Barkley.

SPORT photographers had direct access to the superstars of the post-war era and, in many cases, produced stunning color photographs the likes of which do not exist anywhere else. In the course of SPORT’s 54-year history, many thousands of these images were printed on its pages. But tens of thousands of one-of-a-kind images never made it to print and, in fact, have never been published anywhere.

The archive includes significant files on icons across all the major sports, including:

Mickey Mantle                    Joe Namath                             Muhammad Ali
Jackie Robinson                 Wilt Chamberlain                   Sugar Ray Robinson
Hank Aaron                         Bill Russell                              George Foreman
Willie Mays                          Bob Cousy                               Rocky Marciano
Sandy Koufax                      Oscar Robertson                    Floyd Patterson
Johnny Unitas                    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar          Arnold Palmer
Gale Sayers                          Gordie Howe                          Jack Nicklaus
Bart Starr                             Bobby Orr                               Sam Snead
Paul Hornung                     Maurice Richard                    Ben Hogan
Jim Brown                           Bobby Hull                              Rod Laver

In a 1999 appraisal of the archive done by one of the leading North American fine art photography appraisal houses, The SPORT Magazine Archive was described as “among the most significant resources for 20^th Century photographic images of American sports figures in the world.”

The Sport Gallery Products

Our Products

The SPORT Gallery is the exclusive representative of the SPORT Magazine Photographic Archive and has access to thousands of pieces of exceptional, iconic sports photography, the majority of which are unique, a large number of which were originally published in SPORT magazine, and many of which have never before been seen by the general public.

An exclusive selection of prints is available in limited edition series, while many more are offered in open editions. The prints are unlike anything available in the sports memorabilia and wider photographic markets today. Drawn principally from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the images were selected for their artistic qualities as well as their uniqueness and historical significance.

Not only unique in their vibrancy, quality and subject matter, every fine art print in the SPORT Gallery has been created by the internationally acclaimed Giclée printing process using only the highest quality acid-free papers and inks. This attention to detail has resulted in true artwork that is of far superior quality and durability than what is available in the sports memorabilia and collectible marketplace.

Giclée: The Art of printing
Giclée printing is the new darling of the art world. It is coveted by collectors for its longevity and quality, and desired by galleries and artists alike because it intimately insets artisans into the creative process.

Giclée refers to a process of creating hand-crafted, fine-art prints from a digital source using fade-resistant archival inks. Each individually crafter print is a high-resolution, high-fidelity, high tech production. Four precision nozzles spray up to a million microscopic droplets of ink per second on fine art paper or canvas, creating artwork that is lush, velvet like, and alive with the subtle nuances of the art. The ink is sprayed in a way that actually mixes the color on the page to create truer shades and hues.

A significant advantage of Giclée printing is that it allows the artists or printer full control of the printing process. Each print is individually made. Adhering to exacting standards means Giclée art is far superior in quality to Lithographs or to other products that are mass-produced from standard offset or desktop printers. Giclée art provides a much broader range of color, and the colors are brighter, last longer and are of such high resolution that, rather than tiny dots, they are virtually ‘continuous tone.’

Paper, Ink, Matting and Framing
Every fine-art product from the SPORT Gallery is printed on premium 100% Hahnemuhle cotton rag paper or Premier Art Canvas, and printed with UltraChrome K3 pigmented inks for the highest available archival quality. Mounting, matting and framing are also to the highest archival standards. We use ArtCare mountboard and matboard. Tru Vue UV-coated conservation glass and Roma solid poplar frames, all of which meet or exceed museum standards for fade resistance and durability.

Numbering, Titling and Certificate of Authenticity
All limited edition prints from the SPORT Gallery are restricted to a small total edition size. Each piece is hand titled and numbered, carries The SPORT Collection emboss and is accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity which sets out the details of the edition as well as bearing a detailed description of the image