1848-1872 1873-1897 1898-1913 1914-1945 1946-1990 1991-2008
Post Modern Postcards
1991-2008
While some debate whether the standard sized photochrome or the larger continental will dominate the postcard market, they are missing the digital revolution under their noses. The world has not been the same since computers entered into everyday use and the Internet has changed the way we communicate forever. Business in its drive to ever reduce cost is forsaking paper products in favor of less physical electromagnetic means. Technology has not only affected the way we do things but the way we think and perceive. Many of the traditional reasons for producing postcards are now being answered though other devices and methods. Many more of the traditional institutions that once supported the postcard industry are fast disappearing or evolving into something completely different. While postcards continue to be produced in great number, they lie in the shadow of their former glory. Technology is now creating new routes to take us to new places that we cannot seem to keep pace with. While some embrace the future others look to find comfort in the past. The question that cannot be accurately answered is, where is this all going?
As the traditional supports to the postcard industry disappear it is easy to predict their demise, but this only addresses half the story. While some things will always fade into obscurity, others become highly prized relics of another age. New technologies may destroy older traditions but they also create new paradigms, which we are not yet able to fully comprehend. The sheer number of cards that have been carefully saved for over a century attests to the value placed on them whether we can accurately attribute the reasoning for this or not. Perhaps this factor alone provides more insight to the future of postcards than any of the current trends.
WORLD WIDE WEB
Punch cards were first developed in the 1830’s to direct the path of threads on looms, a process still used today in the manufacture of fine lace. Herman Hollerith borrowed the idea of punch cards for use in statistical analysis while working with the N.Y. Board of Health and the 1890 Census. As his tabulating machines grew more advanced he named his company International Business Machines (IBM). This digital based technology eventually evolved into the computers we know today. Computers had started to talk to one another back in 1969 before most of us had any idea what they were. In 1983 these network lines were divided for both military and private use. By 1985 there were up to 2000 users on line, and in 1988 the network was finally made available for commercial use. On August 6th of 1991 the World Wide Web was created as a means of aiding interpersonal exchange over the Internet, and within two years this service became free. The introduction and widespread use of the Internet has affected postcard collecting beyond expectations. Online auctions and sales have greatly extended the reach of both collectors and dealers. Individual collectors have created web sites to show off their cards. Local postcard clubs can now share information beyond their geographical communities. Ideas concerning postcards can now be shared on a scale never before achieved. There are now over one billion people online.
So when was the first eCard sent? It’s hard to say. Does email comprise the new postcard or is it something more? Email has certainly become the predominant way of sending quick cheap notes, which was the original purpose of the paper card. At some point images with notes attached that resemble paper postcards started being sent over the Internet lines, and by 1996 it became a popular practice. Ever since then there has been a number of online companies that offer copies of antique postcards alongside original modern designs that can be sent out through email. Designers have taken advantage of this new medium to create cards that talk and some that are even animated. These eCards have no physical reality other than magnetic energy floating out in cyberspace. This has created an entirely new set of concerns and opportunities for the eCard collector in regard to storage and display. It also raises new worries in regard to privacy as third party ecard stores can save the addresses on these cards and sell them. As this once free service becomes more commercialized, users can expect ever higher fees. Despite that no postage is required, and that they can be made at home, eCards have not replaced snail-mail cards, at least not yet.
ONLINE AUCTIONS 1995
In 1995 Pierre Omidyar started a company called Auction Web to auction off collectable items between users of the Internet. It has since grown into the giant known today as eBay, selling everything under the sun. It has not only put many postcards into the market place that may have not otherwise ever seen the light of day, it has created opportunities for many people with little access to postcard clubs or shows to buy cards and begin collecting. The auction process however contains inherent flaws in which a small handful of bidders can greatly influence prices, and not always by legal means. When dealing with a product like postcards, with no pricing catalogs available and little history of recorded worth, there is often too little information to go by to make an educated bid. Too many bids are determined by personal obsession with an object rather than market value. While it may seem that these pitfalls can be avoided simply by not shopping on line, the growth in participation in online auctions have begun to destabilize postcard pricing as a whole. The pricing of postcards has always been more of an art than a science but the varying opinions to what a card is worth have never been greater. While these auctions have greatly contributed to the rising value of postcards, its full effects remain to be seen.
JUNK MAIL
The area in which the use of postcards seems to be the healthiest today is in advertising. Every American with a mailing address probably receives advertising postcards in numbers they only wished their receipt of picture postcards would equal. With the creation of bulk rate postage, advertising through the mail remains a viable option for business. These mass produced cards however are not considered collectables unless you include the Sanitation Department. If our predecessors viewed the advertising postcards of their day as we view the junk mail of ours, we can better understand their rarity.
Rack cards, usually continental sized photochromes of 4 by 6 inches, started to be given away for free in the mid 1990’s. It is the revenue from the advertising on them that provides the publisher with profit. As advertising rates are determined by circulation, giving cards away for free provides for the widest distrobution. Unlike the advertising cards that are mailed to every door, rack cards need to attract the attention of those passing by displays in order to get circulated. Some are very attractive being designed by artists or prominent ad houses; others are not. They are a carryover of the giveaway roadside postcards once freely available from service stations and motels in the 1950’s and 60’s. Though extremely popular today their monetary value as collectables are dubious in this age of media saturation. They do however provide some insight into our times, and are a cheap alternative to those unable to afford the ever-pricier antique cards, especially if investment is of no concern.
With problems plaguing the recording industry and new outlets being made available through the growth in technology, many musicians stopped seeking that illusionary record deal and began promoting themselves. In some cases this led to producing and distributing their own work as well. Visual artists had often used leftover gallery cards that advertised a specific exposition of art work for their own general promotion. Now musicians have begun using a new hybrid postcard based on the earlier exposition card and the modern rack card, unattached to any particular event and given away free for publicity. Some of these cards are designed to be folded and inserted within compact disk cases along with the recording. While this type of card is often associated with independent recording artists, larger labels have also taken up their use.
ACTION VACATIONS
Discover America, Inc. was founded in 1965 with government support to help revive the domestic tourist industry that died out in the 1940’s. It was based on the old ideals of national tourism but post war America was a different country and their large scale promotions largely fell on deaf ears. Tourism had created a cultural platform from which postcards of places visited, whether it was an historic battlefield or a scenic wonder, could be purchased as souvenirs. But since the 1950’s vacation time has become steadily more centered on hedonistic activities and spectacle, from simply shopping and dinning to the mountain biking and kayaking of action vacations. Amusement and theme parks of ever increasing size and activity have grown from being the destination of a local day trip to a long family vacation. The ability or even the desire to find the unique has steadily decreased as the American landscape rushes to become more safely homogenized. Postcards are a visual medium, about capturing a view that solidifies ones connection to a place. As vacationers become more self-involved with what they do rather than connect with what they see, will the desire for pictorial souvenirs continue?
MULTICULTURALISM
Although the United States has always been a diverse multicultural society, this was not traditionally expressed in the imagery on postcards. Where Blacks, Chinese, Native Americans, and other peoples were depicted, they were done so as objects of interest rather than as members of the general society. The Civil Rights Movement not only brought Blacks up to the forefront, it inspired many other groups and peoples to assert themselves and demand visibility. While this struggle has provided us with many more paradigms to view our own history, and ourselves, it has fractured the traditional mythology of national identity. This loss of a singular perspective has caused the usual backlash as some look to hold on to the familiar to ward off the anxiety of change. There is now a growing trend to re-embrace the symbols of national identity that were often frowned upon by many as meaningless and outdated just decades earlier. The pictures held on postcards over the years have created very potent images in the American psyche for people to draw on. We often still represent ourselves in the same romantic and sometimes even racist manner as we did on cards a hundred years ago, a perspective which may have been obsolete even then. At this time many formally misrepresented communities have brought their true histories into the light even if they are not yet firmly part of the new National identity. This has at least allowed these groups to be visually represented in more than one dimension.
The first settlement in what is now the United States was made by Spain nearly a century before the founding of Jamestown or Plymouth. After the expansionist policies of the U.S. led to the incorporation of many of these communities into our territories, their Spanish heritage was eventually added to our own in creating the American Myth. This can easily be seen in the way many old missions of the Southwest became important tourist destinations and provided the subject matter for numerous postcards. The Spanish Mission Style would eventually become an important force within American architecture. But while the Spanish culture we absorbed was used to bolster the status of our newer Nation and promote tourism, the people who embraced this culture are mostly absent from older postcard images. When Spanish-Americans were previously depicted it was almost always in some exotic form that would be pleasing to tourists. While postcards today still capture the uniqueness of this culture we now allow ourselves to also portray these people as parts of mainstream society. Debates over our Immigration problems have recently grown nationwide leading some to overlook our Country’s Spanish heritage amidst the heated rhetoric. As long as this topic remains controversial it provides the potential of influencing the imagery found on postcards in many different directions.
MULTINATIONALS
During postcard’s Golden Age, cards were produced by a plethora of printers both large and small. There was stiff competition between them to produce ever more desirable cards to capture a larger share of the market. Some were content to produced cards only of particular interest for smaller niche audiences. But as the demand for cards dropped, many printers were forced out of business while those who survived sometimes merged to sustain profitability. This trend has continued so that even the few large American printers that produced the linens and chromes of the 1950’s and 60’s have now disappeared, replaced by even larger multinational corporations. The results have largely been an increasing blandness. As individual cards are produced in increasing quantity, their subject matter has become more generic to insure greater shelf life. Corporate management may have little personal connection to the region they produce views of. Few corporations now take an interest in the actual product they turn out as they totally focus on shareholders and profit margins. In spite of this, newer technology has also breathed new life into the small local printer. The cost of becoming a postcard publisher is now so low it is within reach of many average people. Although the public no longer has the same desire to produce cards as in years past, their ability to do so still leads to some very interesting and unique postcards.
U.S. TREASURY
There has been a debate for some time about the usefulness of the Penny as currency. While many have tried to hasten its demise, the public’s sentimental attachment to it has kept it in circulation, if only by gathering dust in jars. As of 2006 the cost of making a Penny has risen to 1.3 cents, even though there is hardly any copper left in it. This has created a loss to the U.S. Mint of over 70 million dollars a year. The demise of the one-cent piece may finally be on the horizon in an age of growing government deficits. Although postcards have been highly priced for many a year, the term Penny Post Card is still in use to describe antique cards. If the word Penny falls out of common usage with the end of the coin, will the use of Penny Post Card follow with it?
LITERACY
On top of the threat from email, the drop of literacy rates does not bode well for postcards. Ever since the Golden Age literacy has been in steady decline to about 18% of world population. These figures however are rather skewed as the ability to read varies greatly from one country to to the next, and the definition of literacy has not remained the same over time. Although the worst rates tend to be in developing nations, the United States is not well positioned with a world ranking of 49th place. According to the U.S. Department of Education 14% of Americans were functionally illiterate in 2003. But the problems may run much deeper as larger numbers are reading impaired. Some studies have shown that 60% of adult Americans have never read a book of any kind, and only 6% read one book or more a year.
There seems to be a long tradition of older generations to criticize the handwriting of those younger than they. But this argument becomes dubious when actually examining the back of postcards issued over the last hundred years as there seems to be little difference in handwriting other than the writing tool employed. This however may finally be on the verge of actual change as more and more schools become dependent on using computers. Cursive handwriting has already been dropped from many school curriculums being deemed unnecessary for a modern age. The messages on the back of postcards may one day become as cryptic as a dead language even if one can be found where the handwriting is legible.
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
The first filmless camera was developed in 1972 based on the videotape technology of the 1950’s. But a number of other advancements needed to fall into place before the first commercial digital camera finally became available in 1981. Since then the digital format has completely transformed photography. Many famous brand camera manufacturers are now leaving the film camera business. Even Kodak has been retiring Kodachrome, the film that brought us photochrome postcards. Color separation by copy camera in the production of printed materials has now been replaced by digital scanners. And the real revolution is yet to come, with all its consequences still unseen. Even though photography has slowly integrated itself within the Art World, there has been an ever present dichotomy between the two since inception. Art is seen as coming from the imagination thus presenting a biased view at best. Photographs have been manipulated from the start but the overwhelming response to them is that they are a slice of reality. These long standing paradigms are now growing confused, as the ease and occurrence of manipulating photos have expanded beyond anyone’s expectations. As the differences between photography and hand drawn art are blurred, much confusion will abound in the ways we interpret and value them until a consensus forms new paradigms. What this shift will be is anyone’s guess but it will greatly change the way we view the world around us. These changing ideas will not only determine whether postcards will be continued to be made, but whether we will continue to value those made in the past.
FORMATING
Postcard formatting has undergone changes throughout its history with changes in size and printed backs. But now alongside the postcard racks in many stores are packaged Compact Discs offering a wider and more numerous collection of views than the totality of cards on display. This phenomenon has been growing slowly but steadily, eliminating postcards as they both compete for limited display space. If most contemporary cards are purchased for saving rather than sending, will CDs eventually replace them, especially in the hearts of the new computer literate generation? Older traditions are now fading out of public memory at an ever increasing rate. But as technology races forward, the formats we view our media in are also constantly shifting and developing. The small Floppy Disks that were commonly used in the 1990’s for portable data were down sized from larger discs that were actually floppy just years earlier. New computers with CD readers and writers will no longer read either of them. Now many predict broadband technology will become dominant for data transmission and that CD’s may be obsolete by 2015. With all the effort that has been made to record data onto them, will the same effort an expense be made to re-record this information or will much of this knowledge and imagery simply disappear? While millions of postcards were lost over the decades, millions more have survived the last hundred years. Because they are low-tech their age has never been a factor in our ability to enjoy them.
The war on terrorism as waged by the United States has initiated new preservation concerns. As the Executive Administration defines all email in the same manner as postcards, it assumes the sender has forfeited any right to privacy. As of 2007 there is proposed legislation to force Internet providers to save every single email in perpetuity for possible government surveillance. Our eCards may be stored in government archives long after all paper has turned to dust.
FAIR USE
The Fair Use Doctrine has traditionally limited the ammount of control copyright holders have over their material when a greater social good is created by allowing its use. But now with most copyrights being owned by corporations, the proliferation of imagery throughout the world due to digital communication has led to fears of profit loss. Legislation is now proposed to turn copyright laws into guarantied revenue. Copyrights have also been extended to ensure large media giants can continue to reap profits from images that should rightly have fallen into the public domain. More and more lawyers have gone after artists and photographers who have depicted logos, buildings, or manufactured goods within their work without corporate permission. In many cases legal threats will be issued as an act of intimidation where no case can be made under the law. Publishers now fearing lawsuits have dramatically curtailed certain types of photographic work that have been printed for decades. Many of the images traditionally found on postcards could no longer be used in today’ climate.
OWNERSHIP
We are now seeing a growing trend among businesses to deny ownership to the customers that buy their products. What is rising in its placed is licensing. It is most familiar to us through the computer software we can buy but never really own and has become increasingly difficult if not impossible to share. While many appreciate the value of libraries and are working hard to put their entire content on line for greater public access, others view this as a nightmare cutting into their profit share. Sharing has become such a fowl word amongst many of those attempting to maximizing profit that more and more proposals for one time use of products are being developed. The move toward licensing over ownership will increase as fast as consumer resistance allows. Will postcard dealers be required to pay royalties on every card they sell or will there come a day when paper postcards are no longer available to us because there is no way of enforcing one time use?
Countering this trend toward licensing however is a rapidly changing public attitude toward sharing. As digital technology increases by leaps and bounds, the fidelity of all reproduction is not only growing extremely accurate but also becoming cheaper and easier to transmit. As more reproductive means finds itself in the hands of common folk, the more it is used to bypass traditional means of intellectual distribution. In the face of this shifting paradigm, many corporations continue to tout the line that this is stealing, but will the new digitally immersed generations now emerging ever really believe that? Will our future laws reflect the prevailing beleifs of our populace or be controled by the dinosaurs that run too many of our corporations? In the meantime all consumers are becomming to be viewed as potential criminals to be monitored, but this policy that alienates customers is also proving not to be good for business.
WAR ON PHOTOGRAPHY
The availability of imagery to be placed on postcards is now facing new challenges despite the increasing technological ease of procuring pictures. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on New York City, law enforcement agents around the Country have continually harassed photographers taking pictures of everything from infrastructure to ordinary tourist sites. In most cases the laws prohibiting this activity have been vague to nonexistent which hasn’t stopped warnings, arrests, destruction of property, or beatings. Where no constitutional grounds for enforcement exists, a war of intimidation has begun in an attempt to control behavior. In our present climate the Judicial and Legislative oversight needed to protect American’s rights to free speech has been rare as judges place the law beneath their fears, and polititions maneuver to advance their careers through fear-mongering. Will we start seeing view-cards confiscated off of store racks as possible aids to terrorism?
Attempts to curtail photography have not been limited to intimidation. Much legislation has been proposed or passed to restrict photographers throughout the world though in the United States much of this activity has failed when challenged by First Amendment advocates. At hearings on these issues in New York strong voices of concern were raised that these types of restrictive laws would put an end to the City’s rich pictorial heritage and impoverish future generations. In countries involved in conflict such as Iraq and Afghanistan photo journalists have been killed in record numbers. While always a dangerous occupation their traditional neutrality has not been recognized as they are specifically targeted in attempts to control the flow of images.
Fears of pedophiles has also reached hysterical proportions, being constantly fueled by media looking for market share and politicians trying to advance their careers. The traditional family postcard of your grandfather as a bare bottomed baby posed on a bearskin rug may now pass for child pornography. Photographers have been banned from working in the proximity of schools or playgrounds regardless of their intensions. In some towns it has now become illegal to take pictures of children in public even if they are your own. These rising fears however do not seem to extend beyond the borders of the United States.
CLEAN WARS
Since the end of the war in Viet-Nam our government and its military have been fearful of a free press, for the dissent from a well informed public might force changes in official policies. Ever increasing efforts have been made to limit access to the battlefield in an attempt to control what is seen and thus what people believe. The notion that modern wars fought with smart weapons just kill the evildoers with little risk to ourselves has proven to be erroneous. Yet the so-called superiority of our weapon systems continues to be glorified in much of media’s presentations while many harsh realities are ignored. As in previous wars, American soldiers fighting in Iraq continue to use postcards to write home, but you will no longer find the images of dead bodies or the ruins of homes on them as were commonly seen on cards from earlier conflits. As the media has become concentrated in the hands of fewer corporate giants, they give us depictions of the modern battlefield on postcards that tend to resemble those sent from exotic vacation spas, only with an added patriotic emphasis. Not all of this is due to political agendas as the public’s apatite for gruesome images has steadily declined over the years and publishers can only make a profit by providing customers with what they want. It may be impossible to direct blame as both sides reinforce each other’s behavior but it does not bode well for a society when there is no accountability to the truth.
CELL PHONES
Despite the ability to send quick and cheap postcards via the Internet, the greatest competition to the printed postcard is the cell phone. Since the FCC first authorized its use in 1982, the number of cell phones has increased to the point that they are now an integral part of a great many lives. Many of the cell phone conversations held today seem as trivial as the messages written on the back of postcards. These phones have become more than handy communication devices; cell phones are now part of a new ritual of confirming social relationships. This is a role that many postcards held at the turn of the previous century. And with cell phone cameras it is easy to send a snapshot image along with a message, just like a postcard. One hundred years ago the public sought out contemporary cards of that era. A hundred years later collectors primarily seek out those same cards and not those of our own time. We are no longer dependent on postcards to provide us with a quick means of communication or a view of our world, and movies, television, CD’s, magazines, and video games, create more than enough visual stimulation. Emails and cell phones have now become the primary social means for personal exchange. It might even be suffice to say that the cell phone is the contemporary postcard.
RETROSPECT
The major difference between today’s collector and those of a hundred years past is that we are now capable of putting postcards in a historical perspective. Certain events and topics portrayed on old cards now add a previously unforeseen value to them. We must be careful however not to err by distorting them with contemporary eyes; projecting modern values on them that did not exist when they were made. Postcards cannot be understood without understanding their context. This can also be a problem with modern cards, which are too often compared with their ancestors without taking into consideration the surrounding circumstances in which they are now produced. At the time of their origin, postcards were the fastest and cheapest method of communication across distances; in today’s world of high technology it is now the slowest. Because of this the majority of contemporary postcards purchased today are saved as souvenirs. Those that are mailed are done so more out of following a tradition than for any practical reasons. Almost all quick social exchanges are now made over the phone or through email.
Since no one forces us to buy postcards, the imagery chosen to be placed on them must be done carefully if a publisher is to see any profit. All sorts of emotions and basic human behaviors are played upon to encourage sales. Patriotism, escapism, sentimentality, voyeurism, and sexuality are the top ingredients for marketability, though certainly not the only ones employed. Though overtly displayed on old cards, these qualities were mostly used in more subtle ways that we often do not even recognize today for having been so well trained not to see them. Another draw to postcards has always been the artistic beauty of many of the images printed on them. This alone may account for most of the desire to acquire cards, both in the past as well as today.
