Real Photo Postcards
04.27.07 By Derek DahlsadAs my wifey discussed yesterday, there’s a heck of a lot of postcards out there. People, places, pets, and events, somebody’s turned it into a means of communication, and some of the rarest are D’s favorites - real-photo postcards.
Early in the days of general-public photography, ingenious photopaper suppliers started to offer specialized papers, designed within the specifications of postcard size, with a pre-printed postcard back. Using a regular enlarger and developing process, anyone could turn a photograph into a postcard, and customized cameras and processing equipment made them even simpler. Prior to 1907, the process was a bit limited because postal regulations made senders write their message on the ‘photo’ side of the card, which limited the size of the photo that could be used, and the emulsion side was difficult to write on. A change in the postal rules in 1907 created the postcard we know and love today: 5″ x 3-1/2″, full-frame picture on one side, and the other split 50/50, message and address. With this change, regular photopaper could be sent to the printer and pre-postcarded for easy use.
The quick-and-dirty postcard creation bred a cottage industry of amateur photographers producing scads of postcards for their customers. The owner of a general store could run off a dozen photos of Main Street Podunkville, taken from his store’s front porch, to sell to tourists. Professional photographers could not only produce a nice family photo, but also sell their customers something to drop in the mail to Grandma back in the city. In no time at all, a picture of a parade of picnic could be cruising along in a mailpouch on the floor of a boxcar. Photography expanded from something framed and on the wall to something shared, complete with a caption on the left half of the back.
Identifying a Real-Photo Postcard
Just because a postcard started as a photo doesn’t mean it was developed on postcard-backed photopaper. The most accurate way to tell if a postcard is a real photo is to get out your magnifying glass:
Even modern printing processes have trouble with photographic details; enlarging a photo from a negative doesn’t have the same drawbacks. When you look at a picture closely, you’ll see a pattern of dots in an image produced by a printing press; photos will have a smooth gradient at any magnification.
What Can Be Found In Real Photo Poscards?
Pretty much everything. The subject matter was limited only by what can fit in front of a camera’s lens, and that didn’t leave much out. Some of the most common photo postcards are wither views of buildings and towns, or personal photos of friends and family. The latter can be the most interesting, but the former are often the more valuable. As people try to document their towns or collect memories of their hometown, they will be on the lookout for anything unique that they haven’t seen before. Because real-photo postcards could be as rare as a series of one, they are in high demand. While a small Minnesota resort town may not warrant a professional photographer and a print-run of ten thousand postcards, producing a few dozen using a standard enlarger, a negative taken by the nearest person with a steady arm, and a box of postcard photographic paper was the easiest option. The early years of many small towns were documented this way, and their pictures were sent to the farthest-flung corners that a postman could get to. Real-Photo postcards were printed using older negatives, resulting in historical postcards, but a successful photo may have encouraged an entrepeneur to order up some high-quality cards:
The black-and-white overlay is a real-photo postcard from the 1920s; the color is a professionally printed postcard from a few years later. I don’t know if the other 5 cards from the original photo-set were also converted to color postcards, but when I saw this pair it obviously caught my eye as a rarity.
More To Photo Postcards Than The Picture
The back of the photo postcard can both give clues to its origin, and give an idea of timeframe for the photo. Generally, most producers of the photosensitive postcard paper identified themselves in the stamp-box. Playle’s Auctions has an excellent reference of stamp-box photo postcard manufacturers. Many collectors focus specifically on real photo cards, and it has even spawned a coffee table book of the finer examples. Real Photo postcards are also available in such quantities and demand that eBay has given them their own category. The best place to start looking is, of course, your local antique shops. Invariably, some seller has a box of disorganized postcards that should give you an excellent start at identifying and getting a good look at real photo postcards.
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Article Tags: negatives, photo, postcards================
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May 27th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Hi..regards!! good luck. Nice blog