250 Postcard snapshots from NZ
Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 8:15 pm
Greetings.
The January MOTAT newsletter has this report from the library about a book with 250 postcard snapshots from some 100 years ago. It's a pitty there are no credits for many of them, because most are of/from kinfolk.
QUOTE:
Personalized fragments of our society.
Facing an era : postcard portraits from a century ago offers a collection of more than 250 postcards from the first half of the 20th century that show New Zealanders from all walks of life.
Nearly all the people are unknown. They posed because they wanted to send postcards to their family and friends. Most were created in a photographic studio but some were created by amateur photographers.
At the turn of the century New Zealanders were sending and receiving over one and a half million postcards a year (from the New Zealand Official Year Book for 1899). With a reduction in postage to a flat rate of one penny and a significant reduction in the cost of production of photographs and prints around the same time may have influenced the choice to send a pictorial message.
Whatever the reason the people and places in these postcards are the visual image of how society viewed itself.
The author offers an introduction at the beginning of each section to set the scene. The photographs are uncaptioned and left to speak for themselves.
Sadly as unnamed postcards become part of deceased estates they tend to be destroyed or sold and the information on where they came from is lost.
END OF QUOTE
http://www.motat.org.nz/collections/LIB ... ibrary.htm
Alan SHARP.
The January MOTAT newsletter has this report from the library about a book with 250 postcard snapshots from some 100 years ago. It's a pitty there are no credits for many of them, because most are of/from kinfolk.
QUOTE:
Personalized fragments of our society.
Facing an era : postcard portraits from a century ago offers a collection of more than 250 postcards from the first half of the 20th century that show New Zealanders from all walks of life.
Nearly all the people are unknown. They posed because they wanted to send postcards to their family and friends. Most were created in a photographic studio but some were created by amateur photographers.
At the turn of the century New Zealanders were sending and receiving over one and a half million postcards a year (from the New Zealand Official Year Book for 1899). With a reduction in postage to a flat rate of one penny and a significant reduction in the cost of production of photographs and prints around the same time may have influenced the choice to send a pictorial message.
Whatever the reason the people and places in these postcards are the visual image of how society viewed itself.
The author offers an introduction at the beginning of each section to set the scene. The photographs are uncaptioned and left to speak for themselves.
Sadly as unnamed postcards become part of deceased estates they tend to be destroyed or sold and the information on where they came from is lost.
END OF QUOTE
http://www.motat.org.nz/collections/LIB ... ibrary.htm
Alan SHARP.