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Wish you were here... - December 2007
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The advent of photolithography popularized the
buying, selling, and sending of postcards in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. David Prochaska writes that they were sold at kiosks,
from public parks and exhibitions to restaurants and even on passenger trains.
He notes that there were cases of individuals sending up to 50 postcards
a day! [1] Postcard photographers and publishers intended to "cover
the world" with image collections from the mundane to the exotic, constituting
a voyage of discovery of places and peoples. Collected as individual scenes,
or in larger series of sets, postcards became the medium for everyman to
share experiences of travel, architectural wonder, and personal validation
(I've been there!).
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| Click on an image for a larger view. |
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By the late 1890's and into the twentieth century, photographic
views dominated the picture postcard, or view-card, industry. Professional
photographers using field cameras were employed to produce crisp views of
subjects and landscapes. Images crowded with a multitude of details and
multi-toned delineations were most valued by the industry companies. [2]
The postcard business emerged as an international giant.
Here are a few of the many thousands of postcards from the collection of
the Ingalls Library. Chosen images of France are intended to accompany our
Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition. Paris, Giverny, Normandy, and
Brittany represent a few of the many places the artists lived and painted.
From the Moulin de la Galette in Paris, to Monet's haystacks near Giverny,
these views evoke a world long past and forever changed by war and progress.
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| Old streets in the heart of Paris |
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| Grand boulevards in Paris: places of commerce
and prommenade |
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| Unusual attractions included "ghost show"
cabarets and underground tours |
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| Old Montmartre: home to many artists |
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| Giverny: home to Monet and bucolic landscape
to many painters |
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| Van Gogh and Cezanne traveled to Brittany (Bretagne)
for inspiration |
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[1] Prochaska, David, "Thinking Postcards," Visual
Resources 17, no. 4 (2001): 384.
[2] Christraud M. Geary and Virginia-Lee Webb, Delivering Views, Distant
Cultures in Early Postcards (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1998), 16.
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