A fantasy artist once submitted an amazing illustration showing a skull-headed demon glaring hungrily at the viewer from in front of a complex and twisted grove of obviously cursed trees. The editor loved the drawing, but said “You’re not fooling me, you know. You just wanted to draw those interesting trees and added the demon so somebody would actually buy the picture.”
The world works that way, and it was no less true in the world of postcard illustration. In romance postcards particularly, where pretty much the same loving glances and warm embraces were repeated endlessly, being timeless, it is obvious that the photographer was really interested in something else. I don’t mean those cards where the joke is so big it needs to take up space from the lovers just for emphasis.
This one, say, where we’re spending a lot of space on that picturesque stone wall but we HAVE to, to make the joke about his “stile” more obvious.
And sometimes it’s apparent that the scenery was the inspiration for the whole picture, and you HAVE to emphasize the natural scenery.
Here, though, we have a joke which could have been told in a ballroom, on a boat, or even in a broken tree. But we have it being told while our protagonists lean on a stump because the photographer realized that stump was probably the only thing new about a pair of lovers or the gag.
Other postcards, like the illustration mentioned above, look as if the forest was what the photographer wanted to record, and the lovers and their dialogue were an afterthought. People sell better than trees, you see. There were more lovers than nature lovers in the postcard audience.
There’s the question of definition, too, a matter of making something more obvious (always a good thing when dealing with the buying public.) You can call a scene romantic, but why not emphasize it by showing someone conducting a romance in one corner of the scene (where they won’t block the view)?
It’s a simple compromise: some customers will want to buy a card for the lovers and others for the tree. (Though this can backfire: some will pass the card up because they wanted a closer look at the kiss, and others will spurn it since you have those ruddy people in front of that interesting tree.)
It doesn’t have to be trees, of course. Any really interesting scene, fun to photograph, can have a couple of hand-holders added. (Yes, I see the bridge joke. But they thought of it BECAUSE they wanted to take a picture of the bridge and needed the excuse.)
The result is interesting for all kinds of viewer to this day. Some of us will be interested in the fashions worn by the lovers, or the design of that umbrella, while others will say, “Wow! Where would I need to go nowadays to lie down in a field of giant flowers?” (This blog not responsible for heartache or hay fever if you try this at home.)
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