About 85 Years Ago: Photo Postcards from America (Circa 1907 to 1920) [Hardcover]

David Chien (Compiler)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

History's first amateur photographers lived at the beginning of the 20th century, when photography was just one of many technologies that were dramatically altering the ways people related to themselves & to others. The people who lived in America then were part of social transformations of unprecedented scale. Technology dramatically altered the way they related to themselves & to others. Here, Chien has selected 89 images, printed on postcards & left by these anonymous photographers, weaving them together with beautifully crafted text to provide a poetic sketch of their lives & changing times. Their images lead us into an America not our own -- but one that we may recognize as part of us still -- about 85 years ago.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 132 pages
• Publisher: Roberts Rinehart Pub; 1st Ed. edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570981507
• ISBN-13: 978-1570981500
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,145,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Step into the daily past of ordinary folks..., January 23, 1999

By A Customer

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This review is from: About 85 Years Ago: Photo Postcards from America (Circa 1907 to 1920) (Hardcover)

Contains beautiful day-in-the-life-of postcards from ordinary Pacific Northwest folk in the early 1900's. Author contributes a few sentences here and there to introduce the photos. It's more like looking at someone's photo album than a book -- light on words, heavy on postcards. But the photos are gold. Evoking a time and place long gone but not quite forgotten (thankfully). A must for anyone interested in real photo postcards of people, buildings, and social activities of the day.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ageless, February 2, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: About 85 Years Ago: Photo Postcards from America (Circa 1907 to 1920) (Hardcover)

After I finished the last page I found I was speechless. I read it once again and then I read it yet again. I think the author wanted the images he picked out to make us see people in the past that we could relate to. The images that we see in "85 years" show us people in the old Pacific Northwest that remind us of people we might see in our own neighborhood.. Instead of it looking B&W and faded they seem to take on a living hue in these photographs. You could esentially picture the scene. The people pictured were are all being themselves, and in a culture that is so youth oriented it is nice sometimes to be reminded that there are legions who have gone before us.