The World in Your Mailbox: Real Photo Postcards from the Early 20th Century

Saturday, February 28, 2009,
1:30 pm

William L. Clements Library, 909 South University Ave., Ann Arbor.

Vintage photography dealer and collector Doug Aikenhead will give a lecture titled: "The World in Your Mailbox: Real Photo Postcards from the Early 20th Century” at 1:30 P.M. on Saturday, February 28, 2009 at the University of Michigan’s William L. Clements Library.

In the first decades of the 20th century, Americans were obsessed with picture postcards. Millions of them were mailed each year, and people collected still more in albums and shoeboxes. Today, these postcards provide a revealing window onto life in the early 1900’s when America embraced the modern era and are highly collectible. Most revealing of all are the tiny fraction of postcards created as actual photographs with “Post Card” backs for the address, message, and stamp. Most were produced by local and regional professional photographers with some home-made by amateurs. Collectively, these small but detailed images are a superb resource for historical research and are highly entertaining. Aikenhead will show an exciting variety of “real photo” postcards from a century ago and discuss their relevance then and now. Doug Aikenhead is a photographer, writer, and educator. He has taught photography and the history of photography at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, Central Michigan University, and Washtenaw Community College. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Michigan Photographic Historical Society. He also co-edited Detroit Images: Photographs of the Renaissance City (Wayne State University Press, 1989). Doug has collected real photo postcards for over 25 years, and he has been a dealer of vintage postcards since 1993.

This event is co-sponsored by the Michigan Photographic Historical Society and the Clements Library, and is free and open to the public.

For additional information regarding this event, please contact the Clements at 734 764-2347.

Michigan Photographic Historical Society: http://www.miphs.org/