Postcards may seem like tourist mementos today, but they were actually an innovative form of communication prior to 1900. Postcards helped create global networks of exchange while simultaneously serving as cultural histories.
Postcards have long been used as tools of business promotion, political support and social activism – this collection exemplifies their historical significance while showing their ability to spark curiosity and provoke thought.
STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Postcards offer an intriguing glimpse into cultural life at specific moments in history, capturing ideas and images which would otherwise remain obscure. While today postcards may serve mainly as cheap souvenirs of travel or collectors’ items, postcards have historically represented one of the primary forms of human exchange artifacts. They record an array of data such as captions, colorized photographs (unlike black-and-white prints), postal codes, dates, messages and correspondence advertisements – providing historical evidence in miniature form.
Postcard mania reached its height around 1900, when large historical and cultural themes could often be seen playing out through postcards: urbanization; immigration; changing views on women in society; technological innovation; global events like World War I – all documented through billions of postcards produced, sold, sent out or collected as “social archives.” As such they provide powerful links between local and global networks; accumulate value or lose it over time in new discursive contexts; foster family ties across generations, connect communities in dispersion while serving as inspiration sources for artists and designers alike.
Postcards can also serve as an invaluable teaching aid for students conducting ethnographic fieldwork. Postcards allow them to compare visual imagination with experiences in the field and identify disconcordance between what their expected research site to look like and what actually exists there.
PERSPECTIVES ON TRAVEL
Travel can broaden and broaden one’s perspective of the world. Travel broadens and deepens people’s horizons while strengthening adaptability, helping people appreciate different points of views, experiences (good and bad), and shaping your character. No wonder then that postcards have long been used as an aid in sharing travel adventures with loved ones who couldn’t attend themselves!
Postcards serve as a global medium, creating new connections across cities and nations alike. At The Newberry Library, their extensive collection of postcards from around the world demonstrates their use for commercial and social purposes as well as serving as an important source for studying history, culture and art.
This exhibition showcases an assortment of postcards depicting world landmarks and picturesque scenes, as well as those that document specific cities’ histories. Vintage Buffalo postcards illustrate its path from industrial past to cultural revival; showing resilience and innovation throughout a city that thrives and thrives today.
This collection of postcards not only contains visual content but also administrative records from Chicago-based Curt Teich Company – one of the major producers in the 20th century – that provide researchers with administrative records pertaining to production archives used for postcard production and circulation as well as exploring its social anthropology which has been employed as an ethnography tool.
PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE
One hundred years ago, postcards were an incredibly popular and innovative social object that combined photographic images with text into physical objects that could be sent long distances – connecting into global circulation networks of print media. Postcards served as an important form of communication that helped build local and global networks among friends, families, businesses, industries and reworked photographic images into multiple discursive contexts.
Postcards are iconic travelling objects that span space and time, accruing or losing value and significance with each change of ownership, before eventually being collected into archives, exhibitions, flea market collector fairs or online collections. This exhibition uses both archival research as well as public sharing of postcards among collectors to present an album of images which demonstrate how global cultures were connected through these small yet powerful objects in early twentieth century.
This collection consists of postcards that depict overtly political subjects such as suffrage, temperance and anti-racist movements; Ku Klux Klan; and lynchings, among many other topics. Furthermore, production archives mainly from Curt Teich Company offer useful material on postcard production processes; this allows the exhibit to explore how these postcards were influenced by producers who expressed their social and cultural beliefs through images they selected to publish.
PERSPECTIVES ON HISTORY
Postcards serve as objects of personal expression and global communication, offering students an exclusive window into specific periods in history while prompting analytical clarity. Long considered popular means of connecting with family, friends and acquaintances; postcards serve as an effective medium to promote tourism, sell business products or engage in social activism – this collection of postcards demonstrates how diverse cultures express themselves through postcards.
Postcards have long been associated with European colonies, yet their vast amount of data reveals much more than just colonial influence. For instance, this collection features postcards depicting various global disasters from early 1900s such as China’s 1920 Gansu Earthquake which claimed over 200,000 lives to smaller events such as Chile’s 1906 Valparaiso Earthquake that caused no deaths.
This exhibition highlights how Europeans employed postcards as temporary communications to establish notions of empire. Postcards showing Indian servants mimicking domestic habits of their masters illustrate complex discourses around racialized hierarchy, shifting social status and colonial anxiety. Drawing upon Lauder Archive collections this show illuminates how these postcards were utilized across cultures at specific points in history.