Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905-1930

by Lucy Sante

In rural America at the beginning of the twentieth century, the worldwide postcard craze coincided with the spread of light, cheap photographic equipment. The result was the real-photo postcard, so-called because the cards were printed in darkrooms rather than on litho presses, usually in editions of a hundred or fewer, the work of amateurs and professionals alike. They were not intended for tourists, but as a medium of communication for the residents of small towns, isolated on the plains and in the hills. The cards document everything about their time and place, from intimate matters to events that qualified as news. They show people from every walk of life and the whole panorama of human activity: eating, sleeping, labor, worship, animal husbandry, amateur theatrics, barn-raising, spirit-rapping, dissolution, riot, disaster, death. Uncountable millions of them were made in the peak years, 1905 to 1912.

Previous books on the subject have been content to dwell on the nostalgia value of the images. This book takes a broader and deeper view. The 122 postcards it reproduces cover the vast range of subjects encompassed by the medium—sometimes lyrical and sometimes bracingly harsh—while Lucy Sante’s pathbreaking introductory essay places them in their full historical and artistic context. Sante argues that the cards were a medium of expression very much like the folk music being made in the same places at the same time—open to the complete and unvarnished experience of life, and enacting tradition even as they embody modernity. Besides that, he demonstrates that they represent a crucial stage in the evolution of photography, as the essential link between the plain style of the Civil War photographers and the vision of the great midcentury documentarians, Walker Evans above all.

Combining her gifts as a chronicler of early twentieth-century America, a historian of photography, and a clear-eyed and eloquent critic, Sante shows how the postcards’ "vast, teeming, borderless body of work” add up to a "self-portrait of the American nation.”

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction, History

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Lucy Sante was born in Verviers Belgium and emigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. Since 1984, she has been a teacher and writer, and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. Her publications include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, and The Factory of Facts and Folk Photography. She currently teaches creative writing and the history of photography at Bard College in New York State.

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought Sante's essay on the collection of his real photograph postcards he presents in the book, quite impressive, clearly written, and illuminating. He explains how he became a real photograph postcard collector, what the postcards once went for and what they go for today, and places the craze for real photograph postcards in historical context. The postcards were incredibly popular for a few years - between around 1905 & 1915 - before cameras became widely available, and professional (or amateur) photographers in countless small towns provided a service of publishing editions of photographs on photographic postcard stock. The cards were sold at a very cheap price, the price to mail a postcard was equally cheap, mail service was frequent, cars/highways had not become ubiquitous, the telephone wasn't widespread, and so the postcard at the time was an ideal way to stay in touch even with people a few stops away by rail. There was an explosion of postcard sending - with about a billion cards mailed a year at the heyday of the craze.

Subjects that today we might wonder about were once popular. Such as photos of farming, farm animals, disasters like floods and fires - the cards also filled an important news transmission and memorialization niche in that local newspapers in small towns didn't yet have half-tone technology, or it was still prohibitively expensive. Many individual cards such as of a portrait or interior scene of a party for instance, could also be printed on postcard stock and sent to a relative etc. for pennies. So there is a wild mix of subjects - some newsworthy, such as natural disasters, catastrophes, some landscapes or street scenes, some of public commemorations or celebrations, many simply of ordinary people, many of whom appear to be hard-bitten, extremely poor and struggling, but not ashamed to be photographed in dirty overalls or for example outside of an extremely rudimentary shot-gun style dwelling. People that clearly had nothing other than determination.

The subject matter is endless - and endlessly fascinating. Photos of rudimentary Main Streets - with no people, no traffic, that almost look like empty sets of movie studios. Photos of trains traveling across newly built lines in utterly deserted empty prairies, horse and wagons on dusty streets, a photo of bales of cotton loaded on an endless line of horse-drawn wagons in Texas, marching bands, a horse barn, a shoeshine parlor, a dry goods store filled with skirts and shirts (69c and $1.19), church Christmas shows, movie theaters, the aftermath of a riot when a municipality tried to increase trolley fare from 6 to 7 cents, a labor day parade, various fairway acts, such as trained seals, or "fat ladies," religious bands, religious tableaux, parade floats, river baptisms, a community tug-of-war - part of a town anniversary celebration, Halloween pranks, choruses, men's revival meetings, a Maypole dance, farmers horse drawn wagon with hay stuck in the mud on a Main Street, a car stuck in the mud on a flooded street, a garage, a car wreck, hunters with their catch (rabbits mostly), likewise fish hanging from lines, portraits in painted backgrounds, kids with their dog, a harmonica and guitar player, a pool hall, a boxing match, a political meeting, a carnival, horse-drawn combines, a pageant, circus performers (a clown walking a tightrope), victims of avalanches and exposure to freezing cold, a wrecked airplane, ruins of burnt buildings, scenes of fires, the aftermath of a highly destructive hurricane in Galveston, train wrecks, collapsed buildings.

The cards occasionally have artistic merit (such as an interesting composition, or pattern of light and dark) but Sante correctly points out that the photographers were most usually untouched by the big city influences in photography, they probably didn't even know about a Steichen for example. So the photos are usually symmetrical, direct, lacking "artfulness."

Photographers would roam around their area photographing scenes that they thought might sell at the postcard sale racks in towns. And so there are photos that today would be deemed exploitative or inappropriate to say the least, such as those of American Indians huddled beside a tepee that resembles a thrown together collection of branches and debris, or a show complete with a performer in blackface. There were many postcards made of lynch scenes - Sante omits these despicable "products" but he does refer to them, and I had previously heard about the photos, and how the vigilante actions took on horrid, sadistic overtones of picnics etc., with attendees grinning in the photos etc. Sante points out that not all victims were African American - that is true but most were, tragically.

There are some photos of a revolution in Mexico, which include shots of a firing squad about to execute a captive, with more victims awaiting their turn huddled nearby. One unforgettable postcard image shows a mother holding a dead infant - the mom's face etched with hopeless sadness. Why a photographer would think that this image on a postcard would "sell" is a mystery - but just highlights how different our sensibilities are from those of about 100 years ago.

There are images of fairs, with fair goers milling around. It is always interesting to note the vast difference between then and now with respect to fashion, which can give a clue as to attitudes. The women who appear on the cards were extremely buttoned up - at least the middle class ones were - but all wore the standard uniform of a long fitted skirt and long sleeve, usually Victorian-style shirt, although there are some photos of women in frocks - similarly covered up from head to toe. It would seem that if women were encased in fabric, hobbled in long skirts, many activities would not be open to them - although of course others would. Some things they could do, but others no, their garments would probably make it difficult to engage in some occupations. Of course this has all changed around since then. The need for wartime labor for one thing and changing fashion rendered the old impractical styles out of date and "counter-productive." There was no going back even in peace-time - the demand for equality inevitably led to the acceptance of slacks, much more simplified styles that were based on sportswear or menswear. Finally, today, there's practically no difference between the sexes with respect to the modern casual uniform of sneakers, jeans, and T-shirt.

This is an extremely interesting book that contains reproductions of some of Luc Sante's real photo postcards along with Sante's very well-written and enlightening essay. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in getting a glimpse - sometimes frightening, but usually not that horrible - of life at the turn of the last century in innumerable small towns throughout America.

Here are a few quotes from the essay:

"The postcard craze that blew through the Western world in the first two decades of the twentieth century happened to coincide with a great democratic proliferation of photography in the United States, brought about by simplified processes and reduced costs." "The phenomenon began in 1905, when the postal service inaugurated a special rate for postcards (in those days a penny), coincident with the advent of Rural Free Delivery, fully put in place the following year." "Postal statistics suggest that something like a billion cards of all sorts were sent through the mails every year at the height of the craze, but it is impossible to say how many of those were photographs; neither does the number account for the cards that were sent in envelopes or that were tucked away in albums and mirror frames and drawers and wall-mounted cats'-cradles or that went unsold or were spoiled or destroyed by floods and fires and silverfish." "Virtually every town in America, however small, had at least one professional photographer, who might have doubled as the town druggist or stationer." "...in 1910 the Rochester Optical company, an Eastman subsidiary, introduced a small, quick, one-step automatic postcard printer that sold for just $7.50." "In their emphasis on inclusion and directness and abundance of information, the postcard photographers also connect to the tradition of non-academic art in America, from the itinerant portrait painters of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to the graffiti muralists of more recent times." "The rigidity of the aesthetic and the insistence on perfect condition both stem from the fact that the cards are valued as icons and relics rather than as photographs and artifacts." "This nostalgia, which has not slackened and has perhaps increased in prominence in the face of massive worldwide uprooting and migration and bewildering change that has technology as both cause and effect, overlooks the fact that the period during which real-photo postcards were produced experienced changes even more overwhelming than those of our own time. Arcadia is depicted in these pictures through the medium or the change that will eventually destroy it." "They look as though they were influenced by exposure to naive painting and frontier architecture and alphabet samplers and chromolithographs, rather than to church frescoes or altarpieces or medieval ruins." "I want to convey something about the invisible-telegraph transmission of ideas, about the special kinds of inventiveness and self-reliance required by artists working in relative isolation from their peers (a factor existing in parallel rather than opposition to that invisible telegraph), about the particular constraints and liberties experienced by artists who were thought of as mere artisans or perhaps service professionals by their clients, about the uncertainty as to whether decisions made by these photographers were artistic choices rather than accidental or expedient, about the incursion of modern technology into lives far from any main stem, and how that technology recorded and thus seemingly helped perpetuate traditional ways but actually helped undermine them." "Simplicity and frontality are key to the aesthetic of the cards -- or early-twentieth-century American vernacular photography in general - but they are no guarantee of aesthetic worth." "Photography is unlike other arts in at least one respect: it is seldom entirely within the control of the artist, and almost always represents a collaboration with chance." "After their time had passed, they were put away and forgotten because they were naively matter-of-fact, insufficiently aspirational for people suddenly conscious of the great mass of images now saturating the world and nervously measuring themselves against it." "The postcard's labor had been divided up: formal portraits and ceremonial group shots remained the task of small-town professionals; newspapers took on public events; the snapshot staked out daily life." "...we see them as slices of otherwise irretrievable times ad places, as examples of a highly specific historical phenomenon, as results of decisions made by little-known or utterly unknown artists, as occupants of a particular niche in the history of the medium." "Because of the visual education supplied by history and mechanical reproduction, and because a formerly marginal art has become central, in the process leveling distinctions between high and low, photography has, again and again over the past half-century, released the time-locks on earlier photography." "Most of them probably knew that their work was as provisional as their towns, their circumstances, their lives, even as they hoped that all of it would endure and prosper."

[Charity · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had a TON of information in addition to the beautiful photography. I was stunned to find a card showing the TINY town in Montana where my mom was born and raised; it was of a fire on Main Street!

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nostalgia and Frozen Histories

Luc Sante in FOLK PHOTOGRAPHY: The American Real-Photo Postcard 1905-1930 brings to our attention, or rather reminds us - for how many of us have cloistered these old postcards handed down to us from our ancestors only to leave them tucked away in 'boxes to be discarded/kept' - of a pastime from the early part of the last century when photos of the family or of interesting moments recorded during vacations or simply from daily lives were taken to a shop where they could be made into postcards to mail for very little money to lucky recipients. This craze was world wide, but Sante has focused on American made postcards, and because of that he dredges up on the pages of this very well designed book some 100 photographs on postcards that survey the spectrum of topics that amateurs felt made interesting (and at times newsworthy) messages to family members dispersed across the country.

The variation in imagery is tremendous: a simple portrait of a plumber holding a toilet and tools, strange locations for animals as in pigs on a sidewalk, obviously staged scenes with cutout props as in 'Paper Moon', religious acts, fires and their management by the local firemen, still lifes of death (photographic reliquaries) such as images of the deceased laid to rest in coffins, etc. The emotions these images touch are the spectrum of human interest, from humor to devastation. But it seems that Luc Sante is less interested in the recalling of these times than he is in substantiating these postcards as an important hiatus in the history of photographic art that began with the invention of the camera, then passed to the accessibility of this recorder of human events to the common people, to becoming a means of studying the development of America's progress into and within the industrial age. The book remains entertaining to those who are enchanted with memorabilia, but it also becomes a strong document for studying American history as told by those who lived it. This is an inspiring book, but it also is an important resource for looking back and seeing how we all developed as a people. Highly Recommended.

Grady Harp

[Ron Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting collection of images, mostly from just over 100 years ago, showing the beauty and fascination of the ordinary. The brief introduction is good in explaining the meaning of these images to the collector. The viewer makes his own meaning. The "punctum" (read the book) can be different for each viewer. Real people living their lives -- beautifully.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sante's brief introduction outlines the history of the photo-postcard and his own growing involvement in collecting. The images are drawn from the 2500 he owns. This is a good introduction to this aspect of vernacular photography with an accessible text and appealing, sometimes fascinating images.