Second in our journey is the dye-toned postcard.
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| personal collection |
These toned postcards came in a variety of colours, with pink, green, and purple being the most common. The colours are very bright (especially the pink)-- if you feel they look a bit extreme on your computer screen, they're even more intense in real life.
The processes used to create these coloured prints was dye toning. You may be familiar with other types of toning such as sulfur (sepia) toning, selenium toning, maybe even gold-toning if you're into nineteenth century photography. When a print is toned, the metallic silver particles that create the image are converted into particles of a silver compound. In a sepia toned print, for example, the image particles are silver sulfide rather than just silver. Different compounds have different colours.
With me? Maybe? (if this goes over your head, don't worry, it just barely skims mine.) All right, so, dye-toning operates on this sample principle, with an added twist. The toning process converts the metallic silver into silver ferrocyanide, which is colourless. However, these silver ferrocyanide particles react with dye. So when the print (looking completely blank at this point) is then immersed in a dye path, the concentrations of dye correspond to the densities of the silver ferrocyanide particles, which correspond to the shades of the image.
Phew! If your eyes have glazed over, here's the gist of it: the photograph changes from a black and white print, where the image comes from silver particles, to a print where the image is made out of dye particles instead.
If we look closer:
You'll notice he is very obviously wearing lipstick. Sometimes eyeliner is quite apparent as well. It looks really, really weird now but I suppose we have to remember that the visual cues for these are film, and make-up for men was standard in 1920s cinema. Not all of the men in this cards have obvious make-up, but a lot do. (I just noticed his eyebrows have totally been done as well... I'll have to go check on how common that is and report back!).
As well as the poses, the models' facial types are standard. The women are pretty in a soft, young-looking way. The men have delicate, fine good looks (well, usually good looks, I'd debate the claim on some...) rather than strongly "masculine" features. These were totally the "in" types of the 1920s-- just look at Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino.
As well as being a romance card, this one double as a holiday greeting:
The card is addressed to "Mon Petit", although I can't make out what the name is (anyone?). "Mon/ma petit/petite" is a common French term of endearment and you see it all over these cards.
My French is weak, so for now I'll paraphrase: She expresses her good wishes for Easter and sends "the best and tenderest kisses from your little Suzanne who loves you forever with all her heart."
The card is dated Paris, March 30, 1929.
You'll notice that not only is the card not stamped or addressed, the writer hasn't even attempted to leave a space for the address. Probably 95% of the ones in my collection are like this. The messages imply they were mailed rather than given to someone, but there's no mark of it. I've concluded that they were mostly mailed, but in envelopes, like greeting cards. On a few I can make out the impression of a postmark to verify this. I think there's two reasons. First is that, well, most of them are love letters, and maybe people didn't want the world reading that. Second--and I think maybe more importantly, considering you see this trend even with non-romantic messages--in France at the time stamps had to go on the image side of postcards. I suspect people mostly didn't want to ruin the cards.
There's a few more toning processes to come and lots of great postcards, stick around!
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Dye Toning Sources
Dye toning and its sister, metallic toning (see the next post) were actually used mostly to colour film. Surprising as it seems, toned and tinted films were quite popular in the 1920s, with colours just as crazy and bright as you see in these postcards (sadly they haven't lasted as well). The use of this kind of toning in photographs is quite striking and hasn't yet been discussed, but the film angle is helpful and fascinating. These recources all have great images, I reccomend a look!
"Mordant toning/dye toning," Timeline of Historical Film Colours. http://zauberklang.ch/filmcolors/timeline-entry/1217/
Eastman Kodak, Tinting and Toning of Eastman Positive Motion Picture Film, 1927 edition, available online at: http://www.brianpritchard.com/tinting_and_toning_of_eastman_po_4ed.htm
Read, Paul (2009): ‘Unnatural Colours’. An introduction to colouring techniques in silent era movies. In: Film History, 21.1., pp. 9-46. Available online (if you are able to access Project Muse): http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/fih/summary/v021/21.1.read.html
If we look closer:
You'll notice that the whites are still mostly white, but the "blacks" are pinkish purple. However, if instead you apply colour over a black and white print, as in this close-up of a postcard we haven't seen yet--
--the blacks are definitely black.
[See the bottom of the post for sources and further reading]
But enough about process, let's look at the postcard itself. It is clearly staged, with no real attempt at evoking a natural look or chemistry between the people. In fact, they barely look aware of each other. You see this a lot, though pretend chemistry does seem to get more popular towards the late 20s and early 30s. These staged ones are very forumlaic, too. When I was doing a research presentation on these postcards, I had a slide each collaging just the faces of the women and the men... and I got laughs. The man is almost always in profile or 3/4 profile, with lowered eyes. The woman almost always has this vacant happy expression. I'll look at this further later, so stay tuned for collages.
We've seen the close-up of the girl; here is the man.
You'll notice he is very obviously wearing lipstick. Sometimes eyeliner is quite apparent as well. It looks really, really weird now but I suppose we have to remember that the visual cues for these are film, and make-up for men was standard in 1920s cinema. Not all of the men in this cards have obvious make-up, but a lot do. (I just noticed his eyebrows have totally been done as well... I'll have to go check on how common that is and report back!).
As well as the poses, the models' facial types are standard. The women are pretty in a soft, young-looking way. The men have delicate, fine good looks (well, usually good looks, I'd debate the claim on some...) rather than strongly "masculine" features. These were totally the "in" types of the 1920s-- just look at Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino.
As well as being a romance card, this one double as a holiday greeting:
"Joyeuses Paques" is Happy Easter.
Unlike yesterday's card, I think this one may have been shot specifically with the holiday theme. I don't know exactly what she's holding, but I suspect it may be a traditional Easter thing.
Like the image, the message combines holiday greeting and romance.
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| personal collection |
My French is weak, so for now I'll paraphrase: She expresses her good wishes for Easter and sends "the best and tenderest kisses from your little Suzanne who loves you forever with all her heart."
The card is dated Paris, March 30, 1929.
You'll notice that not only is the card not stamped or addressed, the writer hasn't even attempted to leave a space for the address. Probably 95% of the ones in my collection are like this. The messages imply they were mailed rather than given to someone, but there's no mark of it. I've concluded that they were mostly mailed, but in envelopes, like greeting cards. On a few I can make out the impression of a postmark to verify this. I think there's two reasons. First is that, well, most of them are love letters, and maybe people didn't want the world reading that. Second--and I think maybe more importantly, considering you see this trend even with non-romantic messages--in France at the time stamps had to go on the image side of postcards. I suspect people mostly didn't want to ruin the cards.
There's a few more toning processes to come and lots of great postcards, stick around!
---
Dye Toning Sources
Dye toning and its sister, metallic toning (see the next post) were actually used mostly to colour film. Surprising as it seems, toned and tinted films were quite popular in the 1920s, with colours just as crazy and bright as you see in these postcards (sadly they haven't lasted as well). The use of this kind of toning in photographs is quite striking and hasn't yet been discussed, but the film angle is helpful and fascinating. These recources all have great images, I reccomend a look!
"Mordant toning/dye toning," Timeline of Historical Film Colours. http://zauberklang.ch/filmcolors/timeline-entry/1217/
Eastman Kodak, Tinting and Toning of Eastman Positive Motion Picture Film, 1927 edition, available online at: http://www.brianpritchard.com/tinting_and_toning_of_eastman_po_4ed.htm
Read, Paul (2009): ‘Unnatural Colours’. An introduction to colouring techniques in silent era movies. In: Film History, 21.1., pp. 9-46. Available online (if you are able to access Project Muse): http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/fih/summary/v021/21.1.read.html
The name is Loulou :-)
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