Photo Shoot: Picture Postcards

Steve Heaslip, Cape Cod Times
·2 min read

Time is running short for the wait-to-the-last-minute shopping crowd, heading out for a trip down picked-over store aisles. Unlike the winter glowing ads, where a couple walking in the snow whistle and first a puppy arrives then a new pickup truck blasts through deep snow, most of us toil away with a checklist and a tight budget.

I turned down a weekend chance for shopping to take a deep read of the Sunday paper and was rewarded with a book title, “Real Photo Postcards, Pictures from a Changing Nation.” It is a compilation of the postcard archive of Leonard Lauder. Turning to my CLAMS library app I was able to procure a copy of the book to read. Shopping tip #1, give the gift of books by way of the Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing (CLAMS) at your local library. It’s free.

The photo postcards are a fascinating look back at life in the early 1900s when the penny postcard was popular in large part from the Kodak No. 3A folding pocket camera, its negative the size of a postcard, 3 ¼ by 5 ½.  Many images in the book are from amateurs, everyday street scenes in all the seasons, kids, parades and work life.  The cards that were mailed usually have the added archival advantage of carrying a date and some informal type of caption written by the sender.

The family portrait holiday card is still popular, but the digital Christmas catch-up PDF letter is overtaking the more traditional approach, no stamp is needed and unlimited space. But the old-fashioned way, limited writing space, much like a social media blast on Twitter, keeps things tightly worded and to the point.

A picture postcard view of a nativity scene in front of the Dennis Union Church on a snowy afternoon, going all the way back to December of 2013 when there was a bit of snow about for a white Christmas feeling.
A picture postcard view of a nativity scene in front of the Dennis Union Church on a snowy afternoon, going all the way back to December of 2013 when there was a bit of snow about for a white Christmas feeling.

Shopping tip #2, go back in time, print up some 4x6 photos, winter scenes of the neighborhood are good, mount on card stock, write a brief note and take advantage of the postcard stamp rate, 44 cents vs 60 for first-class mail. Buy a sheet of 20 and instead of shopping, sit down and write to friends and relatives far and wide. It will be a gift well-received and likely make its way behind a refrigerator magnet posted for all to see. Who knows it could even end up in a book of photo postcards compiled in the year 2122.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Photo Shoot: Picture Postcards