Exaggerating the Ordinary: Strange and Funny Vintage Tall Tale Postcards from the 1900s
Hyperbolic postcards, also known as "tall tale postcards" or "fantasy postcards", have an interesting history with roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
These postcards were a unique form of visual humor and satire, using manipulated photography to depict common scenes or subjects in an exaggerated, comical or absurd manner.
The postcards would feature impossibly large animals and crops, often shown being transported by train or wagon, and would usually have some sort of caption to go with them.
Common subjects of these postcards included giant fish being caught and showing massive crops, less common subjects included mythological creatures such as furred trout and people riding oversized animals.
The roots of the exaggerated postcard can be traced to the late 1800s when photography and printing technologies were rapidly advancing.
As postcards gained popularity as a means of communication, artists and publishers began experimenting with photographic manipulation to create humorous and exaggerated depictions of everyday life.
Furthermore, these postcards began to serve as surrogates for travel.
People soon realized that postcards could be used to create or maintain a certain utopian myth about a city or region, and clever photographers began to physically manipulate their photographs.
Nowhere did these modified images, or "tall-story postcards", as they came to be called, become more prevalent than in rural communities, which sought to identify themselves as places of agricultural abundance to encourage settlement and development. Were hoping for.
Food sources specific to the region – vegetables, fruits, or fish – were the most common topics.
The basic process of creating a tall-tale, or "funny" postcard is simple: a photographer will take two prints, one of a background landscape and the other a close-up of an object, carefully cut out the second and superimpose it on top of the other. First, and re-shoot the composition to create the final composition.
Entire businesses and studios were built to produce them, such as the one run by William H. Martin.
At the age of 21, Martin E.H. Moved to Ottawa, Kansas to learn photography from. Corwin, whose studio Martin eventually purchased just eight years later.
In 1908, he began making long-form postcards. His exaggerated images became so popular so quickly that, within a year, Martin's company was reportedly producing more than 10,000 postcards per day.
His powerful, dynamic compositions set the standard for the genre.
Possibly, the outcome of the war also refuted for the first time the imaginary myth on which these postcards were based.
Furthermore, advances in technology and production catalyzed by wartime industry in the form of the affordable personal automobile and the telephone introduced new systems of information exchange, rendering postcards nearly obsolete.
After that point the production of hyperbolic postcards gradually ended, some of which continued until the 1960s.
In contemporary times, there has been a resurgence of interest and appreciation in exaggerated postcards.
Collectors and historians value them not only for their historical importance but also for their enduring artistic appeal.
These postcards provide a unique window into the past, preserving the humor, visual aesthetics and cultural customs of the era marked by a distinctive brand of light-hearted satire.
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