Postcards serve to spread photographic images across global networks – they are mass produced, annotated and circulated for future viewing, which makes postcards an important symbol of social circulation processes.

As an example, postcards depicting colonial “exotic” destinations have been examined for their contribution to Empire imaginaries and as forms of racist mockery.

Origins

Postcards have always been an effective way of sharing experiences and discoveries with those unable to attend in person, or those not living nearby. Postcards allow individuals to express themselves creatively through images and words by giving an inside look into a place or event they might otherwise miss out on experiencing in real time.

Postcards have long been used as an effective medium for communicating the meaning of global destinations in an accessible yet universal manner. Numerous studies have highlighted their role as tools of (post)colonial representation as well as promotional vehicles for tourism and exoticism.

By drawing upon Lauder Archive materials, this exhibit examines how postcards depicted global topics during the early twentieth century. From New York skylines depicting ambition and excitement to photomontage cards depicting changing gender roles, this show showcases postcards’ powerful dual role as both communication tool and expression of social and cultural beliefs and values. Furthermore, using production archives allows an in-depth examination of how producers selected and printed specific images onto postcards.

Formats

Postcards were an increasingly popular means of communication in the early 20th century, especially among travelers who could not share their experiences directly with family and friends who couldn’t travel themselves. Not only were postcards inexpensive but they provided travelers with an opportunity to express themselves creatively using image and text beyond simply showing photos.

In this collection of postcards, spanning centuries and cultures from New York skylines that symbolize ambition and excitement to photomontage cards that illustrate changing gender roles, postcards represent many historical and cultural topics. Furthermore, there are administrative records from the Curt Teich Company’s production archives showing how designs were approved for printing before being officially printed out on postcards.

Postcards offer an ideal means for studying how images and messages circulate. Postcards were an effective visual medium that reconfigured and complicated photographs through extensive circulation processes that involved local and global networks of artists, photographers’ wives/extended families/printers/department stores/bookstores as well as general audiences. Postcards further created narratives that travelled transnational publics, dissolving divisions between producers/consumers while constituting people within Empire-imaginaries.

Messages

postcards conjure memories of vacation or loved ones; yet during their heyday during the early 1900s, picture postcards served as an invaluable social archive – documenting fads, fashion trends, social issues and artistic styles; while often exoticising distant places and peoples to obscure darker realities.

At its height, postcard mania saw billions of cards depict major historical and cultural themes like urbanization; women’s changing roles; sports; celebrity culture; new technologies and World War I all represented on this tiny canvas.

Lauder Archive’s rich collection of postcards presents an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the material and discursive practices surrounding the movement of photographic images between locations. Through exhibition and accompanying publication, this study highlights how postcards rework, complicate, disfigure and transfigure photographic imagery as it is annotated, printed, postmarked, mailed out and collected – contributing to an expansive culture of circulation that connects photographs to people, places, ideas and global audiences across mobile global publics through multiple layers of production, dissemination, consumption & consumption that make up this puzzle of postcard production, dissemination & consumption that makes all this study possible.

Value

Postcards are temporary artifacts that record visual histories of our world. From global urban history, to emotional perspectives expressed by those who created, purchased and sent them; postcards can capture data more readily accessible through other methods than interviews and surveys.

At its height around 1900, postcard mania allowed people to document local sightseeing trips; highlight social concerns related to women’s issues or cultural clashes; display technical innovations like skyscrapers or rail transport; communicate artistic fads or fashion trends; document natural disasters worldwide and more. Our collection features such diverse postcard subjects as New York skylines with ambition and excitement depicted upon their postcards; photomontage cards depicting gender role changes or African American newlyweds posing for studio portraits – just some examples among many more!

Scholars have often considered postcards as a postcolonial medium, but due to their transient nature they serve as a powerful “social archive”, capable of accruing and losing value in different discursive contexts. Furthermore, postcards can serve as an ideal research tool when working collaboratively with mobile migrant populations through collaborative methodologies.

Appreciation

Postcards offer an insight into culture at any particular moment in time. They reveal ideas, images and emotions projected onto objects by those who created, received or used them.

Postcards may seem like the poor relative when it comes to museum collections and scholarship on historical photography of India; however, postcards can be an effective tool for teaching ethnographic methodology and methods as well as providing conversations, guidance, empathic understanding, support for graduate students conducting fieldwork in distant locales.

Postcards offer an opportunity for experimental visual communication and text, challenging conventional assumptions about history’s truth and objectivity. Drawing from Lauder Archive collections, this exhibition highlights some of the most compelling postcards as global artifacts: from Curt Teich Americana postcards and Raphael Tuck & Sons portrait lithographs to images depicting Timbuktu or depictions by Raphael Tuck & Sons and images depicting bustling metropolises such as Timbuktu postcards illuminate global historical themes while showing how images/text can be used to share experiences of travel with those who could not travel physically.