Edward Winter
Having acquired this photograph recently, Eric Fisher (Hull, England) asks: ‘Do you have a record of Capablanca’s game with Carus Colliver, played on 18 October 1919?’
We have found no trace of the moves. The occasion was a simultaneous display by the Cuban (+ 35 –3 = 4) in Thornton Heath, England. Colliver (with the initial J.) was listed on page 5 of the Croydon Advertiser of 25 October 1919 as one of those who secured a draw. See also pages 123-125 of the 2/1999 Quarterly for Chess History.
Perhaps a reader could look into the records regarding Colliver’s tenure of the post of ‘Vice-President Surrey County Chess Association’. Capablanca, of course, was not yet ‘Chess Champion of the World’ in 1919, and his photograph in the montage looks to us like a 1922 shot. It is, in any case, the reverse form of a well-known picture to be found on, for instance, page 67 of Chess Strategy and Tactics by F. Reinfeld and I. Chernev (New York, 1933):
(3757)
We wonder whether any languages have a special (technical) term for the process, favoured for Russian books, whereby photographs are touched up, apparently by a gloved ten-year-old. Particularly ham-fisted examples will be welcomed, and below we repeat from C.N. 3757 (an item which itself discussed picture-tampering) a photograph of Capablanca and place alongside it the version which appeared as the frontispiece to I. Ilyin-Genevsky’s book Match Alekhin-Capablanca (Leningrad, 1927):
The Capablanca picture was also the basis for an Alekhine-Capablanca sketch found in various sources, such as the plate section of Complete Games of Alekhine, volume three by V. Fiala and J. Kalendovský (Olomouc, 1998):
(3901)
The photograph of Capablanca shown in C.N.s 3757 and 3901 occupied a full page (23) in Modern Master-Play by F.D. Yates and W. Winter (London, 1929) and was also on page 19 of the third and final issue of Chess Pie, published in 1936:
From page 343 of Shakhmaty by I.L. Maizelis (Moscow, 1960):
Well-known portraits of Philidor (page 295), Anderssen (page 304) and Steinitz (page 318) were also tampered with, in the Soviet manner, but why?
Our copy of Maizelis’ book was inscribed to Nina Hrušková-Bělská:
(10147)
Michael Clapham (Ipswich, England) provides this sample from Короли и королевы шахмат by V.D. Baturinsky and A. Muratbekov (Frunze, 1983):
(10210)
Even contemporary Russian books offer grisly examples. From page 367 of Короли шахматного мира by V.I. and I.M. Linder (Moscow, 2001):
As shown in Pet Moves in Chess (see too the plate section of Chess Explorations), our archives include this portrait of Ståhlberg:
(10278)
Philippe Kesmaecker (Maintenon, France) draws attention to this pair of group photographs of Carlsbad, 1907:
We shall revert to the matter shortly.
(5685)
Two good-quality scans have kindly been supplied by Per Skjoldager (Fredericia, Denmark). The photographs below appeared respectively a) on page ix of Das Internationale Schachmeisterturnier in Karlsbad 1907, b) opposite page 445 of the October 1907 BCM and c) opposite page 257 of the September 1907 Deutsche Schachzeitung:
As Mr Kesmaecker remarked to us, the figures in the background progressively disappear.
Our correspondent furthermore mentioned the existence on the Internet of a slightly different shot of the group (with, for example, Janowsky in profile), and we have found a copy (also with much airbrushing) in the plates section of Maróczy Géza élete és pályafutása by József Szily (Budapest, 1957):
(5722)
Jan Kalendovský (Brno, Czech Republic) sends two photographs of Alekhine at the 1931 Olympiad in Prague:
We note that a cropped version of the first photograph was published on page 153 of the September-October 1931 American Chess Bulletin:
(6507)
The Alekhine photograph was discussed further in C.N. 6525.
A new feature article, Alterations to Chess Images, has prompted us to experiment briefly with an online program chosen at random. It was asked to improve the following from Photographs of Capablanca:
Without guidance, it produced this in two or three minutes:
The file name of the second image intentionally contains the word ‘doctored’.
(12194)
See too A Fake Chess Photograph and Chess Hoaxes.
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Copyright Edward Winter. All rights reserved.