Photography & The Postcard

Photography & the Postcard 26/02/15

Real Photo Postcards
  • Vernacular – A vernacular or vernacular language is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, especially as distinguished from a literary, national or standard language.
  • Relates to ordinary people
  • Domestic
  • Family albums, snap shots
  • Facebook
  • Social photography


1839 - Photography emerged
1890s – available and affordable
1900s - amateur photography

Postcards were a way to show travel through photography. The introduction of cars meant people could more easily travel. People took their cameras to photograph their travels.

1907s –US postal service changed its policy and allowed postcards to me mailed, with an image on one side, and the address on the other. 
700 million cards posted in America

S&S Studio Portland Oregon 1912 - photos while you wait, with the postal studio next door to send your cards.

Walker Evans - Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera (wiki)





Collected postcards
  • All his visual language showed through postcards
  • Documenting the 1930’s depression in America
  • Snapshotting the everyday
  • ‘Walker Evans and the picture Postcard’

Jack Kerouac ‘On the Road’ (1957)


  • Wrote on one continuous roll of paper on a typewriter
  •  About being on the road, a journey
  • 1950s boom, more people having cars
  • Revolutionary, had no edit
  • Reflecting on the current people in America at the time


Robert Frank ‘The Americans’ (1958 France, 1959 US)



  • Younger generation saw a more realistic version of America
  • Both in images and in text
  • Interested in the projection of what America represented
  • The American Dream, racism, troubled youth
  • Influences Ed Ruscha to photograph everyday things


Ed Ruscha ‘Royal Road Test’ (1967)



  • More things became more acceptable to photograph and document
  • The photograph didn’t have to be perfect or have huge subject matter


Steven Shore (1970s)



  • Postcards had a large effect on him and his work
  • Freed him to be able to repurpose postcards
  • Created his own postcards
  • 56,000 copies of postcards of Amarillo, Texas, that was unwanted
  • Mick-o-Matic camera, snap shot camera
  • Trying to make his work look like postcards using this camera
  • He wanted to create a lack of pretense, throw away photography
  • Wasn’t happy with the quality, moved onto Rollei camera
  • ‘Uncommon Places’ book, after meeting the Becher’s
  • Moved to a large format camera


John Hinde



  • British snapshot photography
  • Employed other photographers to capture images in his style
  • Photographed places like Butlins, British holidays
  • Oversaturated and ‘picture perfect’ Butlins postcards
  • Commercial and cheap coloring
  • Idealized view of the world
  • Sold for a few pence to holiday makers



Martin Parr


  • Collected these postcards.
  • Relating to dreams
  • Saturated images
  • Often in grimy situations
  • ‘Boring Postcards’


John Stezaker


  • Using the medium of collage
  • Juxtapose things together such as time frames and subject matter
  • Blew away the traditional picture
  • Postcards placed over what we would focus on of another image





Posted by