The postcard craze that swept the United States in the early 20th century coincided with the spread of pocket cameras and led to the phenomenon of real-photo postcards, so called because they were mostly made by small-town amateur and professional photographers and printed in their darkrooms, usually in quantities of less than a hundred (unlike the contemporary mass-produced photolithographs). Real-photo postcards were typically produced in small, often isolated towns whose citizens felt an urgent need to communicate with distant friends. The cards document everything about their time and place, from intimate matters to events that qualified as news. They depict people from every station of life engaged in the panorama of human activities -- eating, sleeping, labor, worship, animal husbandry, amateur theatrics, barn raising, spirit rapping, dissolution, riot, disaster, death. The phenomenon began in 1905 and peaked in the 1910s, when many millions of real-photo postcards were mailed each year. Previous books have been content to display these cards for their socio-historical or nostalgia value; this book goes much further. The 122 postcards it reproduces cover the entire field of the cards' subject matter, but Luc Sante illuminates them with the penetrating, stimulating analysis expected from a writer hailed as "a singular historian and philosopher of American experience." Sante wants us to see the images not simply as depictions of a vanished way of life, but as a crucial stage in the evolution of photography, possessing a blunt, head-on style that inherits something of the Civil War photographers' plain aesthetic yet also anticipates the work of Walker Evans and other great documentary artists of the 1930s. Combining all his gifts as a chronicler of early 20th-century America, a historian of photography, and a brilliant critic, Sante shows how real-photo postcards offer a revealing "self-portrait of the American nation."
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About the Author
Luc Sante's books include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, and Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and has written about books, movies, art, photography, and music for many other periodicals. Sante has received a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Grammy (for album notes). He lives in Ulster County, New York, and teaches photography at Bard College.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Luc Sante in FOLK PHOTOGRAPHY: The American Real-Photo Postcard 1905-1930 brings to our attention, or rather reminds us - for how many of us have cloistered these old postcards handed down to us from our ancestors only to leave them tucked away in 'boxes to be discarded/kept' - of a pastime from the early part of the last century when photos of the family or of interesting moments recorded during vacations or simply from daily lives were taken to a shop where they could be made into postcards to mail for very little money to lucky recipients. This craze was world wide, but Sante has focused on American made postcards, and because of that he dredges up on the pages of this very well designed book some 100 photographs on postcards that survey the spectrum of topics that amateurs felt made interesting (and at times newsworthy) messages to family members dispersed across the country.
The variation in imagery is tremendous: a simple portrait of a plumber holding a toilet and tools, strange locations for animals as in pigs on a sidewalk, obviously staged scenes with cutout props as in 'Paper Moon', religious acts, fires and their management by the local firemen, still lifes of death (photographic reliquaries) such as images of the deceased laid to rest in coffins, etc. The emotions these images touch are the spectrum of human interest, from humor to devastation. But it seems that Luc Sante is less interested in the recalling of these times than he is in substantiating these postcards as an important hiatus in the history of photographic art that began with the invention of the camera, then passed to the accessibility of this recorder of human events to the common people, to becoming a means of studying the development of America's progress into and within the industrial age.... Read more ›
The variation in imagery is tremendous: a simple portrait of a plumber holding a toilet and tools, strange locations for animals as in pigs on a sidewalk, obviously staged scenes with cutout props as in 'Paper Moon', religious acts, fires and their management by the local firemen, still lifes of death (photographic reliquaries) such as images of the deceased laid to rest in coffins, etc. The emotions these images touch are the spectrum of human interest, from humor to devastation. But it seems that Luc Sante is less interested in the recalling of these times than he is in substantiating these postcards as an important hiatus in the history of photographic art that began with the invention of the camera, then passed to the accessibility of this recorder of human events to the common people, to becoming a means of studying the development of America's progress into and within the industrial age.... Read more ›
11 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
By turns lovely, gorgeous, lurid, gruesome, luscious and great. Full of histories we did not know, could not imagine and will smile wide and genuine when we do. That Sante is willing to share is to our advantage. When was the last time a single stationary image made you ache? Every library of photography, every institution of learning and every person who fears not our past and those capable of feeling small delights in our present will love this book.
Jim Linderman
[...]
Jim Linderman
[...]
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The real-photo postcard (RPPC) was a postcard, printed in the darkroom on postcard-sized stock, often in editions of a hundred or fewer, which could then be sent by mail at the cheap special rate for postcards. Many were shot and produced by amateurs or small-town photographers, and most were of local events, buildings, or people. The principal impulse behind them was a means for the average citizen to share with distant friends or relatives, by mail, matters of importance or interest in his or her life. The RPPC was a largely folk enterprise, whose boom years were from about 1905 to 1920. Initially, the RPPC clearly had meaning for the photographer, the sender, and the recipient, but as the years passed most became just so much cultural ephemera, on a par with newspaper clippings and the programs for local social or cultural events. Now, a century later, RPPCs are becoming increasingly prized as items of historical, or nostalgic, value.
FOLK PHOTOGRAPHY contains about 120 RPPCs from the collection of Luc Sante, who, somewhat surprisingly for a fellow from Wallonia (the predominantly French-speaking southern part of Belgium), has made a career of sorts in what might generally be called Americana, including the fringes of popular American photography. Sante began collecting RPPCs around 1980, and he chose these 120 from his collection of about 2500 cards as representative of the genre. There are RPPCs of natural disasters (principally floods and fires); small-town street-scenes; pageants and parades; river baptisms; automobile-, train-, and even plane-wrecks; and numerous portraits of everyday people.... Read more ›
FOLK PHOTOGRAPHY contains about 120 RPPCs from the collection of Luc Sante, who, somewhat surprisingly for a fellow from Wallonia (the predominantly French-speaking southern part of Belgium), has made a career of sorts in what might generally be called Americana, including the fringes of popular American photography. Sante began collecting RPPCs around 1980, and he chose these 120 from his collection of about 2500 cards as representative of the genre. There are RPPCs of natural disasters (principally floods and fires); small-town street-scenes; pageants and parades; river baptisms; automobile-, train-, and even plane-wrecks; and numerous portraits of everyday people.... Read more ›
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By erin
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book has an unusual and interesting collection of photographs. I'm particularly interested in this period of history, and in photography, so this was an excellent purchase for me. I actually disagree with the comment complaining about the authors writing though, and wish Sante would have written a little more.
By flashman
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Only one thing spoils this book and it is Mr Sante's insistence on seeing everything though American eyes. I don't think you can call real photo postcards a particularly American vernacular when the medium was global. In any case, the title is apt and the images are mostly excellent and if you are interested in real photo postcards consider this one of the better books around.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By lazy.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
the book is in a good condition. but I do not like the book at all. it is so boring, and the pictures in it are not beautiful. besides, it only has pictures and is not commented well.
2 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Aloysius
Format:Paperback
One of the most visually interesting RPPC collections I have seen! Many thanks to Sante for sharing them with the world.
Unfortunately, the essays drag this publication down. While there are several clever passages, the prose and tone are oppressive overall. The author treats the anonymous creators of these works rather dismissively and in the process comes off as a bit of a Euro-centric prig. While Sante never claims that his is a scholarly or documentary work, he nevertheless leaves the reader wanting to hear more about the postcards...and less about how fond he is of himself.
Unfortunately, the essays drag this publication down. While there are several clever passages, the prose and tone are oppressive overall. The author treats the anonymous creators of these works rather dismissively and in the process comes off as a bit of a Euro-centric prig. While Sante never claims that his is a scholarly or documentary work, he nevertheless leaves the reader wanting to hear more about the postcards...and less about how fond he is of himself.
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