Seen in Chinatown, San Jose, California. Published by R. & H. Photo. Gelatin-silver print on card stock. Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive.
Seen in Chinatown, San Jose, California. Published by R. & H. Photo. Gelatin-silver print on card stock. Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive. 
TITLE_NAME :
Real Photo Postcards - Pictures from a Changing Nation

12/03/2022 - 25/07/2022

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
465 Huntington Avenue 
 
MA 02115 Boston

www.mfa.org/   

 
In 1903, at the height of the worldwide craze for postcards, the Eastman Kodak Company unveiled a new product: the postcard camera. The device exposed a postcard-sized negative that could print directly onto a blank card, capturing scenes in extraordinary detail. Portable and easy to use, the camera heralded a new way of making postcards. Suddenly almost anyone could make photo postcards, as a hobby or as a business. Other companies quickly followed in Kodak’s wake, and soon photographic postcards joined the billions upon billions of printed cards in circulation before World War II.
Featuring more than 300 works drawn from the MFA’s Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive, this exhibition takes an in-depth look at real photo postcards and the stories they tell about the US in the early 20th century. The cards range from the dramatic and tragic to the inexplicable, funny, and just plain weird. Along the way, they also reveal truths about a country that was growing and changing with the times—and experiencing the social and economic strains that came with those upheavals.