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• Snapshots and Short Notes: Images and Messages of Early Twentieth-Century Photo Postcards by Kenneth Wilson
• Richard Selcer

The postcard has gone the way of the elevator operator and the straight razor, replaced by smartphones and YouTube. But there was a time when postcards were a vital component of our long-distance communication, like the telegraph and the letter. Thank goodness for Kenneth Wilson, who reminds us of the time when it was unthinkable to take a vacation without sending postcards to loved ones at home.

This history of the humble postcard covers its so-called golden age from the late nineteenth century through World War I. This little piece of cardstock was transformed in that time from a cheap form of communication into a visual record of the life and times of a nation. The earliest versions had no illustrations and had to be mailed in an envelope. In 1898, the postal service began allowing small cards to be mailed without an envelope, which was revolutionary. The next advance came in 1905 with technology that allowed for the mass reproduction of photographs, resulting in the photo postcard. The author defines "real photo" postcards (11), crucial to understanding the rest of the book, as portraying life in the real world rather than through an artist's interpretation. Furthermore, real photo postcards represented a significant advance over the poor half-tone images produced in newspapers, making the little postcard a competitor with newspapers as a visual record of major events like the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Everything was fair game for postcard treatment. Soldiers took them to war in 1917 and, with the explosion of American tourism after World War II, postcards became a global phenomenon. Racks of postcards appeared in virtually every airport and train station around the world.

Although the book is a selective history, covering only the period from 1900 to 1919, its twenty chapters provide depth about such topics as the degree of artistic imagination and commercial calculation that underlay picture postcards, making them miniature canvases for many aspiring artists. Their wide subject matter included veterans' reunions, historic landmarks, holiday celebrations, natural disasters, train wrecks and other tragedies, as well as the more familiar "wish you were here" images and [End Page 477] photographs of airplanes, automobiles, and giant dynamos. In addition, readers will find serious subjects like the Underground Railroad, racist humor, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Most if not all of the postcards included are from the author's collection. Wilson does the reader a service by showing not just the card's picture but also the message on the back, which provides historical context for the image and a window into the mind of the sender. This makes the postcard a personalized record that is both brief and unsanitized for public consumption. Although the book is primarily a sample of Americana, cultural history, and the visual arts, as many as forty pages include content related to Texas.

There have been other histories of the postcard, but this book's combination of text, visual images, and beautiful design make it among the best for a non-technical audience, even though its title sounds more like a graduate thesis than a book with mass appeal. One can hope that Wilson will do a sequel, taking postcard history from World War I through the 1960s, when Americans collected postcards for the visual image without any intention of mailing them.

审核人：

• 快照和便笺：肯尼斯·威尔逊（Kenneth Wilson）的二十世纪早期摄影明信片的图像和消息
• 理查德·塞尔瑟（Richard Selcer）

明信片已取代了电梯操作员和剃须刀，被智能手机和YouTube取代。但是有一段时间，明信片是我们的长途通讯的重要组成部分，例如电报和信件。谢天谢地，肯尼思·威尔逊（Kenneth Wilson）让我们想起了一次无法休假而又不给亲人寄明信片的假期。

这份不起眼的明信片的历史涵盖了从19世纪后期到第一次世界大战的所谓黄金时代。这小块明信片在当时从廉价的交流方式转变为视觉记录，记录了人们的生活和时代。国家。最早的版本没有插图，必须邮寄到信封中。1898年，邮政部门开始允许在不带信封的情况下邮寄小卡片，这是革命性的。1905年的下一个进步是利用允许大量复制照片的技术，从而产生了照片明信片。作者将“真实照片”明信片（11）定义为描绘现实世界中的生活，而不是通过艺术家的理解来描绘，这对理解本书的其余部分至关重要。此外，真实的照片明信片比报纸上产生的较差的半色调图像有明显的进步，这使小明信片成为报纸的竞争对手，可以直观地记录诸如1906年旧金山地震等重大事件的情况。明信片的处理一切都是公平的游戏。士兵在1917年将他们带到战争中，随着第二次世界大战后美国旅游业的爆炸式增长，明信片已成为一种全球现象。明信片的架子几乎出现在世界各地的每个机场和火车站。明信片已成为一种全球现象。明信片的架子几乎出现在世界各地的每个机场和火车站。明信片已成为一种全球现象。明信片的架子几乎出现在世界各地的每个机场和火车站。

尽管这本书是一部精选史，仅涵盖1900年至1919年，但它的二十章提供了一些主题的深度，例如艺术想象力和商业计算的基础，这些明信片构成了明信片的基础，使之成为许多有抱负的艺术家的微型画布。他们的主题很广泛，包括退伍军人团聚，历史地标，节日庆典，自然灾害，火车残骸和其他悲剧，以及更为熟悉的“希望您在这里”图片和飞机，汽车和飞机的[End Page 477]照片巨型发电机。此外，读者会发现严肃的主题，例如地下铁路，种族主义幽默和Ku Klux Klan。

包括的大部分（如果不是全部）明信片都来自作者的收藏。威尔逊不仅通过显示卡片的图片，还通过在背面显示消息来为读者提供服务，该消息提供了图像的历史背景以及发件人头脑中的一扇窗户。这使明信片成为个性化的记录，既简短又未经消毒，可供公众消费。尽管该书主要是美国，文化历史和视觉艺术的样本，但多达40页的内容包含与德克萨斯州相关的内容。

明信片还有其他历史，但本书的文字，视觉图像和精美的设计使其成为非技术读者的最佳选择，尽管其标题听起来更像是研究生论文，而不是具有大众吸引力的书。可以希望威尔逊做一个续集，记录第一次世界大战到1960年代的明信片历史，当时美国人收集明信片作为视觉图像，而无意邮寄。