Introduction

French romantic fantasy postcards of the 1920s? What exactly are those? Why are they interesting?

Here is the basic answer:

 

Why haven't you ever heard of them? Well, most people working in the field of photographic history would have just the same questions. These kinds of postcards aren't known. In a serious research effort I found only the barest mentions of their existence in any English-language book about postcards (history and/or collecting) and no papers. There is one book (Painted Ladies, edited by Nick Hedges) that reproduces quite a few of one kind of them from the author's personal collection, though the brief contextual writing is vague and occasionally inaccurate. The wonderful print identification resource Graphics Atlas has two entries, for hand-coloured and metallic-- and that's about as much information as it's possible to find in English. I have not yet been able to do serious research in French, and I suspect there are at least more references in French-language works on postcards, but I'm fairly certain there is nothing intensive and certainly there's nothing academic (I have a French historian of photography at my disposal). 

Without getting too much into the politics of the history of photography, part of the reason is certainly that they're a form of popular photography, which has traditionally gained very little attention in the narrative of photographic history (it's only just starting to change). To paraphrase that aforementioned French historian of photography-- "Why aren't these in the history of photography? Well, for one, they're pink."

And how!

The dominant mode of thinking in the history of photography has been the idolization of modernist/"straight" photography-- photography that isn't altered, photography that looks like nothing else but photography. Turning photographs pink is not modernist. This modernist viewpoint also privileges the artist-photographer, the genius with a vision. Such an approach leaves out huge swathes of photographers, from snapshooters to commercial portrait or advertising photographers, to the anonymous photographers who  set up faux romantic tableauxs to sell as postcards. Finally, for most of the history of the idea of "history of photography", the emphasis has been on art. These are not art. These are velvet paintings of Elvis.

This is not modernist (almost surrealist, though)

As I'm sure is terribly obvious by now, I don't like this approach. I feel it's backwards. I feel the emphasis should be on the popular side of photography, the kind of photography that the majority of people have interacted with, the photography people have used and worked into the narratives of their own lives. It's with this spirit that I approach these cards. I've already done a research project on them in graduate school and I intend to take it farther. As I'll talk about later, these postcards were really, really popular for a while. They were a kind of photography regular people (as opposed to the artistic elite) liked, and bought, and kept. They can tell us about what regular people wanted in photography in this period much more than can the museum pieces. I think that's great. 

I hope I haven't been too terribly academic--this blog isn't meant to be an academic project. I love these and I want to show them to people. I also want to give them context, and I'm still in the process of learning about that context, so there'll be that too. All of these postcards come from my own rapidly growing collection. 

So, on to the postcards! "French romantic fantasy postcards of the 1920s" is a term that I've come up with--it isn't the best, and I'm open to suggestions, but it expresses the main points. Obviously, they are postcards. They are also real photo postcards, even if that's not necessarily obvious-- each one of them is a photograph that was exposed to a negative and developed. "Fantaisie" is a sub-genre of postcards in France, referring to this certain kind of beautiful unreality, usually quite colourful (I will talk more about this later). "Romantic" isn't 100% accurate, as there are postcards of children that I would put into this category, but they seem to be a spin-off-- the majority of postcards in this category are couples, or individual men or women presented in a pretty romantic light. "The 1920s" also isn't one hundred percent accurate, as they seem to run into the early 30s, but it's easier than always saying "1920s and early 30s". I'll give dates on specific postcards, when they've been written (95% of the postcards are written, but not all have dates (or sometimes, dates but no years)).

Saturday January 23, 1933

There are a lot of other traits of these postcards that I can discuss, but, well, that's what the blog is for! It's still a work-in-progress but I think I'll usually post an individual postcard (front and back) and talk about it, maybe sometimes comparing it to others. I will also have posts discussing traits, characteristics, and trends more generally, but probably less often. 

As I said, all of these postcards are in my own collection. I don't know of any institution that has any, even online, although if you do, please let me know! I'm happy for you to use the pictures for non-commercial purposes, such as in a blog, though please source (and if you use in in a blog, please share, I'd love to see!). I think they're wonderful (sometimes wonderfully gaudy) and more people ought to see them. 

I'll probably be tweaking some things in the  next couple weeks until I get this blog just how I want it. I'd appreciate any feedback!

Merci!