13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AS WE WERE, September 19, 2005
This review is from: As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905-1930 (Hardcover)
My brother, Bob, read this book before I did. He's a Harvard graduate with a PhD and an extensive vocabulary, but he's a populist at heart and in practice. He was animated and enthusiastic about the book. Nodding and gesturing he said: "She gets it."
AS WE WERE covers its subject, American Photographic Postcards, thoroughly and with insight, but the book does more than that. It transcends the genre and becomes a book about life "We're face to face with both their moment of reality in the card and their absolute transience.". The author's scholarly approach is laced with wisdom and humanity. Who would think that a book about real photo postcards (to use the vernacular) would be so compelling?
Ms. Vaule's introduction to photographic postcards was as a child. Her grandfather had them in albums. "For my grandparents the card represented a souvenir of a place or a special occasion, a status proudly attained or an expression of delight in their son's young life. For me, the card becomes a way of getting closer to them as they were before I entered into the continuum."
Real photo postcards were made by professional photographers and amateurs alike. Real photo postcards were "unpretentious, on home ground, cheap, and ready for mailing..." Surprisingly, the vast majority were not mailed but were used as souvenirs or gifts.
Real photo postcards showed people in their everyday clothes standing in front of the clapboards of their homes. The author elaborates on one such photograph: "This is such a stable picture, all verticals and horizontals except for the collar and windswept skirt. Rebecca, her left foot solidly at center, is a pillar of cheerful strength." There's a family in their Sunday best, out on a rural road, standing for their portrait. One young man curiously sits apart on a pile of stones. There is a delightful photograph of a boy on the ground with his hand on a resting pig. The sender's message: "Dear Aunt.....Joe wants to know if you know which one is he......"
Ms. Vaule comments on a photo of a working man holding his baby: "........incongruity of strapping man and tiny child so tenderly held, and of their physicality against the painted romantic landscape.....We are struck with the man's concentration on the task: hold the child carefully, face the lens so that a fitting image can be made."
Real photo postcards showed how people worked, and what they wore when they worked. There is an outdoor portrait of a group of postal workers, who hold their packages of mail like trophies. Their humble presentation becomes our treasure. In another scene, there's humor in the two loggers who turn the saw blades on themselves. On another page, the huge barn with the symmetrical slope in front of it defines the four farmhands who stand in its doorway. The Ohio bootmaker looks like an actor on center stage.
The selection of photographs is especially rich. We see a group of children arm in arm, running in a joyous dance on the beach in Santa Barbara. We know it wasn't as spontaneous as it appears, but who could've choreographed the two children to the right who are side by side with legs raised, or the bunching that occurred to the line at the left?
Not all is blissful in this America. There is the photo of the general store with a message about the sick father on reverse. There's the interior of Mary Fletcher Hospital where patients and nurses alike pose for the camera. The three men from Hornbreak Tennessee seem to gawk at us, just as we gawk at them. We see George Schmitt's Red Devil plane in flight, taken in rural Vermont. The plane transforms this card from mundane to captivating, and then we read the message: "This is Schmitt flying the day he was killed."
in looking through the imagery in this book, we have to abandon the concept that all is naive, for much of the work is informed, even if it's informed by an earlier time. There are the Montpelier boys in front of the ruins of a still smoldering fire. Their dark clothes provide great contrast to the snow around them. A pedestrian is a blur and the dog is a 'ghost' image. This depiction of action is now perceived as a modern value, yet it's as old as photography itself.
We bring ourselves into these photographs. What's more surreal than the Cincinnati flood scene showing an urban landscape populated only by people in boats with oars?.This particular scene has added significance since Hurricane Katrina, and yet it still seems imagined.
One senses the hope and changing values of the time. A small town shows off its shiny fire engine. The store advertsiing "New & Second-Hand Furniture" reminds us that the recycling industry is not completely new. A young woman dives off a dock to this response; "I guess by the picture that the College girls have fully as good a time as we do." We see people posed with machines and a couple of factory postcards could be right out of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times.
Ms. Vaule's sense of inclusion truly reflects the American experience. While celebrating diversity with pictures, the author points out the racist language on the reverse of an image of people in an alfalfa field as well as the disturbing sign above the Hopi and Navajo dancers. We marvel at the beauty of 'Alaska woman' and are intrigued by the woman holding the puppy and an empty chair.
Don't let the title AS WE WERE deceive you. It is accurate, but this is not a nostalgic book. It offers insight to who we are and how the past precedes the future.
My brother is right. Rosamond Vaule does 'get it.' And while she 'gets it' her greater gift is in the telling.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Compelling Look at Our American Past, March 6, 2005
This review is from: As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905-1930 (Hardcover)
Rosamond Vaule's new book, As We Were, is a wonderfully readable study of the early twentieth century "real photo" postcard. What began as a childhood passion for her grandfather's basket of photographic postcards has evolved into a scholarly look at over 200 true-to-size postcards which reflect aspects of American life from 1900 - 1930: a Model S. Ford, a three-desk schoolroom in South Carolina, the bi-plane and airship, cowboys in N. Dakota, a barn raising in Wisconsin. The author provides a detailed and colorful history of this seemingly "humble" subject matter. One learns about the intriguing ghosts of "spirit photography," the "Kodak girls" and the craze for postcards by 1905 when 7 billion were sent worldwide. But the real soul and beauty of the book reside in the images on the "real photo" postcards themselves. One is struck by the grave expressions of early twentieth century Americans and the matter of fact messages they sent. "Arrived Saturday. Start work Monday." Many of the "real photo" images in the book are compelling works of art and each postcard begs investigation for informational clues about its subject. I found myself looking repeatedly at each postcard, intent on unearthing a new find; an untied shoelace, a face peeping through a window. In our era of digital image manipulation, As We Were celebrates the integrity and unintended surprises of the early photographic postcard. Handsomely presented, this book is a pleasure to read and a treasure to keep.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Real Photo Postcards: They're Really Photographs, June 7, 2009
This review is from: As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905-1930 (Hardcover)
In recent years, the real photo postcard (printed from a negative rather than by a press) has emerged as a serious focus of attention for students of the history of photography. Rosamond B. Vaule's book, AS WE WERE: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHIC POSTCARDS, 1950-1930 (published in 2004), is a beautifully designed introduction to that approach.
Vaule's main point is that George Eastman enabled itinerant and amateur photographers to leave the formal portrait studio and inexpensively create more natural, spontaneous images of people and places everywhere. These images are invaluable documents of a moment when American life was changing dramatically, through a shift from rural to urban life, technological innovation, and immigration.
The book, which appears to have originated as an academic thesis in art history, places real photo postcards in the historical context of postcard production generally and briefly describes the technology for producing them. It examines several categories of subject matter: "views" (landscapes, cities and towns, resorts, and popular sites), aviation, disasters, local events, war, studio portraits, portraits taken in people's ordinary environments, ethnic portraits for tourist consumption, homes, workplaces, people actually working at various occupations, play, and celebrations. The author hints at topics not well covered in this book: humor, oddities, eroticism.
The book presents a wealth of striking real photo postcard images. Inspired by Roland Barthes' CAMERA LUCIDA, the author asks readers to encounter each one as a specific world. To illustrate the ways real photo postcards were used, Vaule gives fuller attention to the work of J. V. A. MacMurray, an American diplomat in China from 1913 to 1929; and the postcard collection of a young Pennsylvania girl around 1905-1907. A list of postcard photographers working before 1930 is provided.
AS WE WERE builds on the pioneering book, PRAIRIE FIRES AND PAPER MOONS: THE AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHIC POSTCARD, 1900-1920, by Hal Morgan and Andreas Brown (1981). And the volume is a useful complement to the essential REAL PHOTO POSTCARD GUIDE: THE PEOPLE'S PHOTOGRAPHY, by Robert Bogdan and Todd Weseloh (2006). The GUIDE is aimed at postcard collectors and provides more comprehensive treatment of technical aspects of real photo production, collecting categories, card quality, postcard dating, preservation techniques, research methods, and numerous individual photo postcard photographers.
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