Starting at the end of the nineteenth century and continuing through at least a third of the twentieth century, Americans enthusiastically consumed an incredible number and range of postcards. Commentators called it a craze, "postcard mania." Real photo postcards, photographic pictures printed directly on postcard stock, were wildly popular and millions were produced by small town commercial photographers as well as by snapshot amateurs. The photo postcard is probably the all time most popular photographic format---the people’s photography. Hoarding by collectors and their ubiquitous presence in family albums make them one of the largest and most significant reserves of original photographic images. Historians of photography and connoisseurs of fine photographs have largely ignored them. They never got beyond the stigma the format carries as insignificant, utilitarian artifacts of popular culture.
 
Most real photo postcard photographers were insiders to the world they photographed, people intimate with their region’s people and geography. It was from that position that they photographed every nook and cranny of America. The pictures they took were a part of the culture they documented. Many were ordinary people with extraordinary talent. The best of their work resulted in a documentary expression that is engrossing and important.
 
Walker Evans was a postcard collector and described his own style, an approach he said he derived from postcards, as vernacular. By this he meant images that were rich with common detail and grasped the setting as it was, as the person in the street experienced it. Although postcard photographers practiced in different styles, many achieved the vernacular quality that Evans emulated.
 
© Robert Bogdan - rcbogdan@maxwell.syr.edu (October 2006)
 
Bob Bogdan and Todd Weseloh recently published Real Photo Postcard Guide: The People’s Photography, Syracuse University Press, 2006
 
All the images in this exhibit come from Bogdan’s collection. Some are illustrations in the book.