Figure 1.--This American posrcard would have been taken about 1910. As half-tone publishing of phiotograpohs was so new, itwas fir some time a good joke. Here was a typical exagerated post card. The melons were enlarged, but the rest of the postcard was normal size, including the teenger wearing knickers and long stockings.

We also see what might be called 'exagerated' postcards, usually at tourist venues. These exaggeration postcards are also known as 'tall tale' or 'fantasy' postcards. We continue to see them today. We see a lot of photographic tall tale postcards at the turn-of-th 20th century. This was just when the half-tone technology of printing photographs in magazines or newspapers was developed and thus very new. The same technology was used for commercially printing postcards. These postcards were a unique form of visual humor and satire, in which manipulating photography to seemingly realistically depict ordinary scenes or subjects in an exaggerated, funny, or absurd manner. As this could not be essily done before, for a decade or two it was a good joke. It soon became a tired joke, but for a while we see all kinds of examples. The two most popular in America were farmers with huge produce or fishermen with huge fish. This was a play on farmers braging about the largest garden produce or fishermem bragging about the largest catch. Here we see huge musk melons/cantelopes (figure 1).

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Created: 1:13 AM 10/3/2023
Last updated: 1:13 AM 10/3/2023