1848-1872 1873-1897 1898-1913 1914-1945 1946-1990 1991-2008
Golden Age of the Post Card
1898-1913 page 1
page 2
The year 1898 marked the beginning of a publishing boom as the U.S. Government reluctantly gave up its monopoly on printing postcards. The publics desire for cards had been firmly established by their interest in exhibition cards the decade before. Now with a rising economy all the pieces were in place for the postcard industry to grow and the publics thirst for cards to be quenched. Some publishers had ready stock in anticipation of privatization. It did not take much prodding for others to see where opportunity lay. But it would take some years for this codependent relationship to gain high momentum. America’s victory in its war with Spain led to greater confidence and more curiosity of world affairs. But President McKinley’s assassination in 1901 created much anxiety about America’s future slowing business growth once again. But by 1905 or so the desire for cards turned into a craze. An abundance of available credit in these overly optimistic times created a general business boom that allowed the production of cards to increased dramatically and postcard collecting became the world’s largest hobby. Anyone who could became a publisher to get in on this collecting craze. Some of the best postcards ever made came from this period. They were produced in quality and in quantities never to be seen again. It is interest in these postcards that drives today’s collecting market. While the growth of the middle class provided the capital to sustain such frivolity, postcards were cheap enough to be purchased by nearly everyone. While many poorer immigrants did not collect cards, they purchased large quantities of them for correspondence between scattered family members.
These cards gloried in the innovations of their day, happily presenting the new electric light bulb, the automobile, and the aeroplane. This was also a very conflicted time as modern innovations in the arts and technology were outpacing cultural values that remained stuck in the last century. The images on these cards showed more than mere views; for lack of other outlets they became sensitive to the changing social currents of the time.
The panic of 1907 puts a sudden stop to this expansion and many publishers begin to disappear as quickly as they entered. Public demand for postcards however remained high and the better publishers flourished. Over optimism would cause trouble again by 1909 as protective tariffs led to declines in demand. As falling prices put many publishers out of business, the looming war with Germany would cut off imports of quality cards. The Golden Age was a worldwide phenomena incorporating different types of cards and varied postal histories of other nations, so its exact dates are open to some interpretation.
PRIVATE MAILING CARD 1898-1901
As the U.S. Government was tiring of the costs to produce postals an increasing demand for additional cards had grown from the popularity of exposition and souvenir cards. This in turn inspired a flurry of new publishers to enter the market who lobbied diligently for postal reform. While eager to transfer the burden of card production, but conflicted about the loss of revenue, the Government issued new postal regulations but with many added restrictions. Starting on July 1st, 1898 postcards could be sent through the mail for only one cent regardless of whether they contained a message or not. The Post Office Department also ended its monopoly on the printing of postals, but the words Private Mailing Card - Authorized by the Act of Congress on May 19th, 1898 were required to be printed on the back of all cards not issued by the government. Regulations also required that these cards be slightly smaller in size at 3 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches and printed in light colors of buff, cream, or gray. Many publishers could not afford to redesign their inventory of cards to meet the new regulations and they went out of business. But the lower price coupled with recovery from five years of economic depression inspired others to enter the market. Some were waiting for the new regulations to take effect and had cards available that July. Larger images were introduced to the front of cards, though many mailing cards retained the format of the pioneers with a small illustration and a large blank area for writing.
While the many new postal restrictions prevented publishers from creating cards in the older pioneer styles there were many such cards out among the public when the Act took effect and these continued to be mailed. Since there were no penalties attached to the act, pioneer cards were either delivered or sent to the Dead Letter Office at the discretion of the mail handlers.
NATIONAL TOURISM
The beginning of the 20th century was also the start of an age of mass consumerism. Vacations and trips were now a marketed commodity. Railroads in particular made efforts to associate travel to the proper locations with becoming a better Citizen. Lacking the multilayered history of Europe, Americans connected their identity to this country’s vast landscape and its scenic wonders. With the frontier largely tamed the landscape was now approachable, where the tourist could act out nationalist fantasies in a safe controlled setting. The subjugated Native Americans could also be romanticized and cast as objects of tourist interest. Tourism was oriented away from the South so not to have to deal with uncomfortable realities around race when creating regional mythologies. Much of America depicted on view-cards were not ordinary slices of life, but carefully selected compositions designed to present the Country within a particular set of ideals, just as tourist destinations were chosen to reinforce national identity. Tourism as a whole creates an insulating bubble from which we can view other peoples and places without leaving the comfort of our own beliefs and habits. Postcards depict not so much how we live but how we see others and ourselves.
A SPLENDID LITTLE WAR
Although war with Spain broke out with the United States in 1898 over disputes regarding Cuba, the first shots to be fired would be in the Philippines when Admiral Dewey attacked Manila. Though the Spanish-American war ended quickly the insurgency against American occupation in the Philippines dragged on for years. As the American postcard industry was only in its infancy during this war, most cards that were printed depicting the conflict did so in retrospect, and usually only as part of broader patriotic themes.
The more lasting effects of this war on postcards was due to the American occupation of the former Spanish territories of the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Hawaii was also annexed to the United States in these years as a military necessity to wage war in the Pacific, and the Canal Zone of Panama was also added to U.S. possessions by 1903. As the American Empire increased in size so did the number of postcard publishers that produced views of these newly acquired lands. These publishers tended to be Americans who set up shop overseas while the cards were printed in the United States or Germany. Many other American publishers that had only produced local view-cards up to this point suddenly added far away scenes of these new territories that the public had much curiosity about.
The Spanish War would only be the beginning of a series of conflicts that would soon engulf Western interests in Asia. In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion had broken out in China and American and European troops were landing on its shores. By 1905 Japan was fighting a bloody war with Russia on the Chinese mainland in Manchuria. Many postcards capturing these Asian conflicts were produced but few by American publishers. The largest influence these wars had on postcard production in the United States was indirect as Americans became even more fascinated with naval ships and things Japanese.
The postcards published by Americans in their new colonies were largely produced for an English speaking audience who could afford them, either back in the States or for the occupying forces and commercial interests that followed. Because of this most postcards from these lands of this period are bilingual. This not only allowed for smoother handling by diverse postal employs, but it expanded the market into which postcards could be sold. The postcards depicting the Russo-Japanese war followed suit. There was a large audience for these cards beyond that of the two contenders, and it was not unusual to have titles in six languages. Many European publishers would continue to produce postcards with a myriad of languages on their backs to widely expand the prospects of distribution. This however has made it sometimes difficult to determine what Country has issued the card when they lack a publisher’s or printer’s name.
Photographs were occasionally sent through the mail as handmade cards in the 19th century, but it is George Eastman who is most responsible for the development of the real-photo postcard. Prior to the 1880’s negatives were produced on glass with a freshly made and still wet photosensitive emulsion. With the invention of the dry plate process and roll film, amateurs started taking pictures in great numbers. So many companies started up to supply them that they depressed the entire market. To survive in this highly competitive climate Eastman developed a complete and easy to use camera system he named Kodak, -You press the button, we do the rest. This marketing strategy not only allowed him to survive but also propelled him to the top of his field. While the first known real photo postcard made its appearance in 1899, they did not begin to be made in number until Eastman bought the rights to Velox photo paper with a pre printed postcard back, and began to seriously market it in 1902. A year later he put an inexpensive folding camera on the market that produced negatives the same size as postcards allowing for simple sharp contact printing. No other company put nearly as much money into advertising. Great efforts were made to distinguish the artistic quality inherent in real photos from that of halftone reproductions. Between 1906 and 1910, Kodak offered a fee based service where they would process and print real photo postcards adding to their convenience and popularity.
Real photo postcards proved cheaper to make than the traditional cabinet cards the public was used to and they soon went out of fashion. With many people now able to create their own cards with simple Brownie cameras, studio photographers were feeling the loss of revenue from their portraiture work and most started publishing their own cards to make ends meet. All but the most important photographs were now shot in the postcard format. While some became well known for their line of photo cards, most others had to become a master of many trades. Local events as well as scenery were captured, printed, and often sold out of the photographers own studio. Many times elaborate studio props would be made to attract customers for informal portraits. This was very popular at resorts and amusement parks where many photographers took up residence. Many became salesmen offering their work to other local retail outlets, while others took up the itinerant life, traveling the country in search of subjects and sales.
Labeling real photo postcards was an expensive affair. Since no additional printing was actually required on the card, adding ones name or even a title was an extra step involving time and money better spent. Printers required minimum orders larger than the number of cards most photographers produced. Professional photographers had the luxury of printing real photos as they needed them, without the expense of maintaining inventory. Many cards were titled by writing on the negative, and sometimes a photo studio would rubber stamp their name on a card’s back, but more often than not it was just left blank. Because of this the quantities of any particular image made are often unknown, as many do not indicate who made them or where the photograph was taken. Many one of a kind cards produced by amateurs in their homes are indistinguishable from those made by factories in large quantities. But there are those photos that possess such great personal charm that there is no doubt they were made by amateurs. Not interested in art or style, they often give us the best look into the ordinary lives of people at that time.
MOMENTO MORI
People of this time were closer to death than we are today. Many that lived a more rural life often having a hand in the slaughtering of animals, and the death of a child due to disease was a sorrowful but more common event. Death was a public occasion where friends and the community at large were expected to say their goodbyes at the family death bed. In photography this matter of fact approach can be found ever since Mathew Brady’s exhibit The Dead of Antietam held in 1862. Here in place of romantic heroics, images of bodies lying across this great Civil War battlefield became the focal point of the show. They were meant less to shock than to present an unfiltered reality beyond everyday rhetoric. While the romantic traditions did not disappear, an emphasis on realism took took hold of both photography and the arts in the post Civil War years. This duality would become an ever present factor in the production of postcards.
Photographing the dead became a tradition that was passed down to real photo postcards when they appeared. Many cards were made showing a dead family member, often to be passed out to relatives and friends. It was also not uncommon to see bodies torn apart in battle on postcards through the First World War. But as death moved from the community to be hidden away in hospitals, this type of imagery became less welcomed and largely disappeared; not only within families but from our view of war and tragedy.
POST CARD (Undivided Back) 1901-1907
With the new postal regulations of December 24th, 1901, the words Post Card replaced Private Mailing Card on the backs of privately made cards. Government issued cards would retain the title of Postal though the public would soon use both names interchangeably. The previous issued size restrictions were also relaxed. As the images gracing the front of postcards grew larger only a small blank border tab, usually along the bottom or side, remained to write a message. With increasing quality cards were now beginning to be purchased largely for their pictorial value. The higher quality of cards created greater demand bringing ever more publishers into the business. Many of the names that would rise to importance in postcard publishing were in business by 1903.
NEWSPAPER CARDS 1901
In the late 1890’s there was fierce competition among newspapers, nowhere better exemplified than between the papers of W. R. Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. They were two of the earliest publishers to print comics in color to attract readers. Hearst stole the first successful strip, The Yellow Kid, from Pulitzer and thus it became known as the War of the Yellow Papers. As they started to invent scandalous stories to attract even more readers the term Yellow Journalism was coined. Starting in 1903 Hearst’s New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco newspapers started inserting sheets of chromolithograph postcards that could be cutout. Many other newspapers soon followed. They were printed on paper closer to newsprint than card stock, which adds to their ragged appearance today. By 1907 the postcards were being replaced by cutout dolls and toys. A variation of the cutout card was the coupon card. Newspapers would print weekly coupons that could be redeemed for postcards published by that paper.
RURAL FREE DELIVERY 1902
Postage is paid only to cover the cost of transporting mail from post office to post office; traditionally there was no home delivery. If you were lucky a postman or private company would bring mail to your home for an additional fee. It was not until 1863 that the Post Office Department began free home mail delivery service in 49 cities. By 1890 free home delivery had expanded to service cities with over 10,000 inhabitants, then 454 in number. But even at the beginning of the 20th century 60 percent of America’s population still lived in a rural environment. It might take a day or two of missed work to go out and pick up mail at the nearest post office. Mail often wasn’t retrieved for months. In 1896 an experiment was initiated to deliver mail to regions outside of cities. This was a difficult task since most mail went out by horse and buggy until the service was motorized in 1914. By 1902 free rural delivery became official postal policy. The sudden ability for millions of Americans to easily send and receive mail greatly added to the demand for postcards.
CARD SETS
Since the advent of the exposition card, postcards have been sold in sets. But it was in the years following the private mail card that sets were widely used as a marketing ploy. Not only were cards issued around themes such as state capitols, famous people, or presidents, they were also issued for view-cards of cities and tourist attractions. They were often sold wrapped or in an envelope, or sometimes even boxed, so the series could not be broken up until purchased. Few of these sets exceeded twelve cards though sets of over a hundred cards are known.
Many of the card sets produced for hotels and resorts captured a wide range of views that would be experienced by the visitor to that establishment. This often meant that some mundane images were included just to balance out the subjects. In this way cards that may not normally have enough appeal to sell on their own are sold anyway as part of a set. This all or nothing approach brought in more money for everyone at the receiving end of the sale. But cards that may have once been admired due to a personal connection to a place when first purchased, can now seem to be out of place curiosities when sold individually to the modern collector. With most early sets now broken up there are a vast array of generic looking driveways, entranceways, and lobbies available that make one wonder why they were ever made.
HAND COLORING
Applying paint to a printed surface by hand is the most obvious way to obtain a color picture, but it was not commonly used on postcards until 1902. Hand coloring was considered low skill work and it was often contracted out to women. Despite modern perceptions, a large percentage of factory workers have always been women, and they were often employed in the printing trades. Each colorist was responsible for one hue, which would be applied in production line fashion. The colors used rarely extended beyond the additive primaries, red, green, and blue. When the German printing industry collapsed at the end of the First World War, most of the hand coloring of cards moved to Belgium and France. The postcards from these countries tend to have a more varied pallet. Early hand colored cards in the United States were usually little more than a few simple broad washes across a halftone image, but by the 1920’s they rivaled those created in Europe. As labor costs grew this process declined then faded away. But during the Depression years it was temporarily revived as hand coloring became cheaper than color printing.
Pochoir (French stencil) is a method of adding color by hand with the use of cut stencils as guides. Known since the Middle Ages the process was used to achieve subtle coloration on collotypes. It became most popular when creating flat patterns on the Art Deco cards of the 1920’s. This stenciling method eventually evolved into the screenprinting process.
Photographs were originally colored with watercolors and dyes, but if not used carefully they could obscure the image or buckle the paper. They also had a tendency to dry unevenly. Sizing was usually applied to a photograph first so the paint would not damage its delicate surface. Special oil based paints were eventually designed for hand coloring. These transparent colors would often be painted on then rubbed off so only traces were left behind. Colors needed to be built up slowly so not to hide the image underneath. Kodak marketed soluble tinting crayons and velox coloring kits that contained sheets of colored dyes from which pieces could be torn and dissolved in water. Quite a number of Real Photo postcards were color tinted, but they make up only a small fraction of overall photo card production.
PHOTO SUPPLY HOUSES 1904
While large publishers became desperate for photographs trying meet the ever increasing demands of the postcard collecting public, many small publishers could not even afford to hire a photographer. From this situation grew a new type of business that would warehouse negatives and sell them on request. Brown Brothers was the first such company, founded in 1904 with a staff of twelve photographers. At first they targeted large newspapers, which at this time often did not have their own photographers. They eventually went on to supply postcard publishers with images as well. They were a forerunner to the stock photography industry that began with the H. Armstrong Roberts Agency in 1920. Photo supply houses and large postcard publishers both sent agents out across the country buying up the negatives held in stock by various local photographers. They amassed giant collections of images this way, rarely noting or often forgetting who supplied them or when they were taken. To this day photographs from this period are often attributed incorrectly. Pictures from stereo-views and lantern slides were bought up in bulk and images taken decades before the advent of postcards were printed onto them in the mad rush for new pictures. While the earlier historic dates were sometimes incorporated into their titles, they were more often than not printed to pass for contemporary scenes.
Catalogs were distributed to potential publishers that showed the different images available for printing. Small shops might find a picture of their hometown this way, ready for publication. Most of these photos were not copyrighted for the photographer rarely was willing to go go through the trouble. Not only was the photographer’s name and date required to be added onto the image, a registration form needed to be filled with the Government along with two copies of the photo. Most photographer wound up with little to no say of how their work would be used and the same images were often sold to different publishers at the same time. It is not uncommon to see the image on a real photo postcard reprinted as a lithograph by a different company, and in gravure by yet another. Some publishers just bought real photo cards off store racks and sent them off to be printed under their name. After copyright reforms in 1909 brought all regulations under one act, a broader scope of protection was established though many abuses continued.
EXOTICA
As Europeans colonized the world, the many businessmen, soldiers, and civil servants that found themselves in foreign lands have always sought to communicate the unfamiliar sights they encountered with their families back home. Picture postcards not only fulfilled this demand, it provided imagery for a public at large that was starved for information on the distant world. Because the postcards produced in many non-Western Countries were not marketed for the local population, who were usually too poor to purchase them, the images chosen for these cards were done so in manipulative ways. The practice of portraying a foreign land as exotic was nothing new; it was common practice among artists for ages, for the more novel a place is found to be, the more interest it will draw. Since scenery often proved to be too familiar in its general characteristics, the more common subject for the exotic postcard were depictions of the local inhabitants shown in native dress, or undress. On European cards these people are often referred to as Types.
While the United States had produced similar cards of its own Native Peoples, its interest in the exotic grew as it began to seize new possessions overseas. Many publishers began adding images of American colonies to their inventory even if they never carried cards beyond local views before. The term exotic can be applied to any place, culture, or people different from oneself, rendering its definition fairly relative. Ironically while most cards depicting Types were made in Europe, Europeans in their traditional dress were being purchased by American tourists for their exotic flavor. While that which is different will often stimulate a natural curiosity, presenting it as exotic is one way of creating a safe mastery over it. It allows other cultures to be only partially engaged without seriously facing realities that may force a questioning of one’s own beliefs or superior status. The exotic is meant strictly for the observer for they are more about reenforcing the viewers superiority than displaying foreign lands. People that are presented as exotic never see themselves in those terms.
VOYEURISM
While voyeurism is often associated with pathology, there is an argument to be made that all our interests into the lives of strangers, whether it be from books, movies, or even postcards are a form of voyeurism. Some of this behavior in fact may be part of our evolutionary heritage. From the stand point of our visually saturated society, it is difficult to comprehend the appeal the influx of postcard imagery had a hundred years ago. For many it was their first contact to a world outside their isolated community. But in many ways the images we seek out, or that are provided to us, are not snippets of reality, but a means of creating standardized precepts that can provide a safe barrier between the viewer and the subject. This can often be seen in ethnic postcards that give no true insight into peoples lives, but present them in a manner comfortable to our eyes. By limiting viewpoints and reducing them to objects of interest, ethnic peoples become as two dimensional as the cards they are printed on. Many postcards of East coast Native Americans show them wearing the headdress of Plains Indians because that’s what they where expected to look like. They could also be used to provide a socially acceptable outlet for erotic fantasies as they could be publicly presented in ways that no propper Westerner could be.
Seaside postcards often deal with the sexual nature of voyeurism more overtly. Beaches of the 19th century were sometimes sexually segregated even though there was little flesh to see. Woman’s beach attire, complete with bathing shoes, differed little from street cloths where no more than hands and face could be shown. It wasn’t until the 1890’s the women’s bathing dress started to show some forearm. The trend toward covering less flesh continued very slowly, but postcards give us a false impression as to its true progress. As many seaside postcards were designed to be risqué, the swimsuit styles tend to be twenty years ahead of what was considered socially acceptable.
Many small town newspapers could not afford to print illustrations even with the new halftone process. Local photographers often filled in the gap by capturing local events on film and quickly producing real photo postcards that might be sold the same day. Postcards ended up capturing the non-picturesque social concerns of the day, along with events such as fires, floods, shipwrecks, and lynching. But these photos have an appeal beyond documentation, as there is also a voyeuristic connection to violence. The tragedy of others demands our gaze. As more newspapers and magazines took on the responsibility of printing this type of imagery, postcards confined themselves to more tourist oriented subjects.
ROTOGRAVURE 1904
The flatbed cylinder press, used in relief printing, evolved from the early rolling presses used for intaglio work. A form sat on the flat bed of a press while paper was fed to it from a web, then pressed with a cylinder. Governments that didn’t want to loose tax revenue collected from individual paper sheets hampered the development of this promising technology for many years. In 1846 R. Hoe found a method of placing type on a cylinder (stereotyping) and the first rotary press was born. Its advantage over other presses was its speed. Lithography at this time could make very little use of rotary presses because the stones used could not be bent, and the alternative metal plates were delicate and wore out too quickly. But the rotary press inspired the idea of incising the metal cylinder itself to run over fed paper for continuous printing. Photogravure had been used in commercial printing since the feed paper press was developed in 1863, but there was no way to expose a cylinder to a photograph through a halftone screen. In 1895 Karl Klic discovered a way to infuse a halftone screen into photosensitive gelatin tissue that was exposed to the image before being adhered to the cylinder. Halftone images could now be used with gravure on rotary presses. Rather than patent and license his invention, Klic hoped his Rembrandt Intaglio Printing Co. could keep a monopoly on the process; but when an apprentice left for America he took the secret with him. By 1904 rotogravure was in widespread use and producing many postcards.
In 1908 two textile printers dramatically changed the way rotogravure would be used. Ernst Rolffs invented a new method of screening rotogravure cylinders. Instead of etching an irregular grain into the cylinder with rosin powder, a line screen in the gelatin tissue would be first used to impart a regular grid pattern. Each ink cell between the lines of the grid would then be etched to different levels, each holding different amounts of ink corresponding to the image to which it was exposed. The cylinder could now turn through a bath of fluid ink, while a doctor blade, invented by Eduard Merens, would remove the excess ink from its surface. The image itself was protected from the blade by the raised grid lines that held it. This mechanical inking process sped up printing time considerably and it started replacing the old hand inking and wiping methods within two years.
PANORAMIC CARDS
Sometimes considered novelty cards, panoramic postcards actually stand out on their own. Printed two, three, four, sometimes eight times average length they were most often folded so they could be mailed as regulation sized postcards. The rarity of these cards increases with the number of folds. In 1904 the Cirkut Camera was patented which was capable of capturing a 360-degree panorama. Although this camera was employed in postcard production, the cropping traditional large format negatives could also produce panoramas of two or three panels because of the great detail they captured. While these cameras were designed for taking group photographs, landscape had been the most common theme for panoramic paintings, and this tradition continued with postcards. Many of these cards have not aged well and have torn apart from excessive folding. A single card with a torn edge, especially without markings on the back, is usually a sign it is only a piece of a once larger card.
THE HOLY LANDS
While Jerusalem lay within a Province of the Ottoman Empire its importance to the religions of the Levant made it and the surrounding lands of Palestine an important point of pilgrimage to many of faith. Many photographers followed in the steps of these pilgrims, selling them photos and eventually the postcards that were made from them. Because this region had such mass appeal and significance to Christians all over the world many publishers who only produced postcards of local or regional views added this far away land to their inventory. Images of Palestine were often the only foreign views a store might carry. And images of this region were only available to most people at this time through postcards.
In 1903 Theodore Roosevelt bought out French interests in their attempt to build a canal across the Panama Isthmus. The U.S. controlled Panama Canal Zone was set up as construction on a new canal began the following year. Its importance in cutting the shipping distance between the Atlantic and Pacific ports in the United States by half was not lost on American’s, and it created much interest in the Canal. The massive scale of the project also inspired much interest and reverence. It was a practical example of faith in technology and the better world it would provide; and one that could be captured by photography. In many ways the Canal Zone became a modern holy land and again many publishers who never created views outside of their locality suddenly carried postcards of the Canal’s construction. As thousands of workers, shopkeepers, and military personnel poured into the Zone from the U.S. they created an addition impetus for the creation of postcards. Images of the Panama Canal continued to be made after its completion in 1914 but they were far less common.
