The Postcard Age, By Lynda Klich & Benjamin Weiss

 

Christopher Hirst
Friday 29 March 2013 16:00 EDT
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In the decades around 1900, postcards were "a seemingly instant communications technology… just as the Internet is today."

This international collection reveals that the avant-garde was quick to grasp their potential. The stylised restraint of the Bauhaus and athletic photomontages of the Soviet Constructivists remain cutting-edge.

More remarkably, such dynamic imagery was also harnessed for the sales pitch. An advert for motorcycle oil is mostly blur; travel sickness pills were promoted by figures of utmost elegance beside trains and cars.

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