Real Photo Postcards: Unbelievable Images From the Collection of Harvey Tulcensky

It may be hard to believe, but there actually was a time when the postcard image was not a cliché. To reach it, you'll have to set your clock back to the end of the nineteenth century, when an Act of Congress allowed Americans to mail a card for just one cent. A few years later, Kodak introduced an easy-to-use and affordable folding camera that put postcard power into the hands of ordinary citizens, setting off a craze. Real Photo Postcards is a collection of the most outlandish and idiosyncratic, beautiful and even occasionally bizarre images of this early postcard period.

Painstakingly assembled from the collection of Harvey Tulcensky, one of the world's most avid collectors of these original postcards, Real Photo Postcards includes images of natural phenomena (floods, storms, fires), Main Street America, rural life, political parades, and wacky "exaggeration" cards (such as a photographically manipulated giant rabbit!). Together these cards show an oddly personal and intimate perspective of America at the turn of the 20th century.

Laetitia Wolff is the design editor of Surface magazine, the former editor of Graphis, and an international consultant on design trends and culture. She is the founder of the creative consul-tancy futureflair.