It brings us great sadness to report that Ron Dwight has passed away. He will be remembered by all among the contortion community for his wit and wisdom, as well as for the great work that he did in archiving contortion photos of the past.
Unfortunately, these CDs are no longer for sale to the public. However, the serious fans and collectors who purchased the CDs consider themselves lucky to have seen countless photos that otherwise would have been seen only by the owners of each photograph. Although the CDs are no longer for sale, the CHP will continue to release a small number of these photos through our CHP Picture of the Day feature and through future updates of historic artists.
Each of Ron's CD-ROMs contains over 6000 images. That's a total of 24,000 images on a set of 4 CD-ROMs. Many people who have been collecting contortion images for their entire lifetime don't have anywhere near that many photos. The images are in 800x600 pixel JPG format, and are sorted into directories alphabetically by artist name. Each directory has an index file identifying the performer name and name of the pose. A command line search utility was provided to search the index files, but it uses somewhat dated technology. And, for further ease of browsing, index images are also provided that show many thumbnails of the images in that directory within a single image. A shareware image viewer also comes bundled on the CD, but it also uses dated technology.
The price of each CD was $200 when they were last sold in 2002. Ron generously donated 30% of the revenue from the CD sales to contortion schools and organizations throughout the world. We know that at least 50 copies of the first CD were sold. That is old information, so we don't know how many of these CDs were eventually sold by 2002. But, we know that it was more than a few.
Ron was dedicated to preserving the history of contortion, as well as to helping make the future even better. His preservation of these old materials will help ensure that our rich history will never be lost. And, his philanthropy helped many young artists, many of whom are now professional contortionists. Ron's memory will forever live on with his friends here at the CHP. As Ron would always conclude ... Cheers,
| B/W Index #1 | B/W Index #2 | B/W Index #3 | B/W Index #4 |
| B/W Index #5 | B/W Index #6 | B/W Index #7 |
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