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Tall-tale postcards affirmed the fundamental American myth of agricultural abundance — a myth that often diametrically opposed reality. Ultimately, these deceptions remain benign by way of their sheer absurdity, injecting a light-hearted, often humorous note into a landscape seldom willing to offer its own. If the ideal promised by the American Frontier did not yet exist in the real landscape, at least it might in an imagined one.How were they constructed?
The basic process for creating a tall-tale, or "freak," postcard is simple: a photographer would take two prints, one a background landscape and another a close-up of an object, carefully cut out the second and superimpose it onto the first, and re-shoot the combination to create a final composition. The most common subjects were food resources specific to the region — vegetables, fruits, or fish. Successful tall-tale postcard artists were those not only skilled enough to seamlessly join together two images, but also those able to envision and create dynamic compositions, often involving people mid-action. Though difficult to perfect, the resultant product was compelling, evoking a documentary snapshot.Why did their popularity wane?
In 1915, due to the onslaught of World War I, America banned the import of German [paper] postcards, with their diminished popularity on a national scale to follow soon after. Arguably, the aftermath of the war also fractured, for the first time, the very utopian myth upon which these postcards were based. What's more, the advances in technology and production catalyzed by wartime industry, in the form of and affordable personal automobiles and telephones, ushered in new systems of information exchange, making postcards all but obsolete.
Read the full article from the Wisconsin Historical Society here.
See lots of different postcards here and here.
