Synopses & Reviews
In rural America at the beginning of the twentieth century, the worldwide postcard craze coincided with the spread of light, cheap photographic equipment. The result was the real-photo postcard, so-called because the cards were printed in darkrooms rather than on litho presses, usually in editions of a hundred or fewer, the work of amateurs and professionals alike. They were not intended for tourists, but as a medium of communication for the residents of small towns, isolated on the plains and in the hills. The cards document everything about their time and place, from intimate matters to events that qualified as news. They show people from every walk of life and the whole panorama of human activity: eating, sleeping, labor, worship, animal husbandry, amateur theatrics, barn-raising, spirit-rapping, dissolution, riot, disaster, death. Uncountable millions of them were made in the peak years, 1905 to 1912.
Previous books on the subject have been content to dwell on the nostalgia value of the images. This book takes a broader and deeper view. The 122 postcards it reproduces cover the vast range of subjects encompassed by the mediumsometimes lyrical and sometimes bracingly harshwhile Luc Santes pathbreaking introductory essay places them in their full historical and artistic context.
Sante argues that the cards were a medium of expression very much like the folk music being made in the same places at the same timeopen to the complete and unvarnished experience of life, and enacting tradition even as they embody modernity. Besides that, he demonstrates that they represent a crucial stage in the evolution of photography, as the essential link between the plain style of the Civil War photographers and the vision of the great midcentury documentarians, Walker Evans above all.
Combining his gifts as a chronicler of early twentieth-century America, a historian of photography, and a clear-eyed and eloquent critic, Sante shows how the postcards vast, teeming, borderless body of work” add up to a self-portrait of the American nation.”
Synopsis
The postcard craze that swept the United States in the early twentieth century coincided with the spread of pocket cameras and led to the phenomenon of real-photo postcards. Real-photo postcards were typically produced in small, often isolated towns, whose citizens felt an urgent need to communicate with distant friends. The cards document everything about their time and place, from intimate matters, to events that qualified as news. The phenomenon began in 1905 and peaked in the 1910s, when many millions of real-photo postcards were mailed each year. Previous books have been content to display these cards for their socio-historical or nostalgia valuethis book goes much further. The 122 postcards reproduce here cover the entire field of the cards' subject matter. These images are not simply a depiction of a vanished way of life, but are a crucial stage in the evolution of photography.
Synopsis
The postcard craze that swept the United States in the early 20th century coincided with the spread of pocket cameras and led to the phenomenon of real-photo postcards, so called because they were mostly made by small-town amateur and professional photographers and printed in their darkrooms, usually in quantities of less than a hundred (unlike the contemporary mass-produced photolithographs). Real-photo postcards were typically produced in small, often isolated towns whose citizens felt an urgent need to communicate with distant friends. The cards document everything about their time and place, from intimate matters to events that qualified as news. They depict people from every station of life engaged in the panorama of human activities -- eating, sleeping, labor, worship, animal husbandry, amateur theatrics, barn raising, spirit rapping, dissolution, riot, disaster, death. The phenomenon began in 1905 and peaked in the 1910s, when many millions of real-photo postcards were mailed each year. Previous books have been content to display these cards for their socio-historical or nostalgia value; this book goes much further. The 122 postcards it reproduces cover the entire field of the cards' subject matter, but Luc Sante illuminates them with the penetrating, stimulating analysis expected from a writer hailed as "a singular historian and philosopher of American experience." Sante wants us to see the images not simply as depictions of a vanished way of life, but as a crucial stage in the evolution of photography, possessing a blunt, head-on style that inherits something of the Civil War photographers' plain aesthetic yet also anticipates the work of Walker Evans and other great documentary artists of the 1930s. Combining all his gifts as a chronicler of early 20th-century America, a historian of photography, and a brilliant critic, Sante shows how real-photo postcards offer a revealing "self-portrait of the American nation."
About the Author
Luc Sante's books include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, and Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and has written about books, movies, art, photography, and music for many other periodicals. Sante has received a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Grammy (for album notes). He lives in Ulster County, New York, and teaches photography at Bard College.