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Kids
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120 pages
19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm -
Meat
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A large proportion of humankind eats the flesh of dead animals, usually quadrupeds, and most often bred and raised for this purpose, as food.
This collection of old postcards illustrates the manner of preparation and style of display of this foodstuff. Many of the cards have been inscribed and posted yet rarely comment on the pictures – they bear messages of goodwill and family news, complaints of ill-health and reports of weather experienced.
Since the cards are mostly pre-1920 the cattle will have eaten grass (rarely the case in the USA today) and the fowl will have lived in smaller communities. Acts of butchery will have been readily visible in shops and carcasses have hung in the streets outside. My collection informs the eaters of today of the work preceding the appearance of a steak or a joint.
- John Kasmin -
Americana
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Loners and assemblies, families and cities, stand for a new sort of life of swift changes of status, adhoc structures, delight in acquisition as well as valour in deprivation. And how real is the love of the gigantic or, anyway, the biggest , and the need to show one s bond with the national flag, and to take up the new . Of course, this is a picture, mostly, of the U.S. before the depression of the 1930s, and the future is still a shining reward. Energy and willpower will do. A few sorry people remain in the shade, so included is some cruel fun.
- John Kasmin -
Burden
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
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Deft
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A collection of skills work that fingers do, under and over, in and out, braiding, stitching, weaving and twining. This is how baskets are made, and carpets, a suits and skirts, and all of them require nimble hands and patience.
Now we call much of this labour craft , but in the early 1900s, when postcard publishers sought to entertain and educate the public, such makings were the only methods available, and thus designated work . The common thread to this selection of images is indeed thread fibre, yarn, cord, straw, silk and stalk. Those who bought these products respected and valued them in a different manner than us, who use and abandon factory good carelessly. Machines don t mind. Mending is almost ended.
- John Kasmin -
Elders
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Fish
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This book of postcards treats fish as food for mankind – I like the sentence in the 1911 Britannica: ‘From time immemorial fish have been captured by various forms of spears, nets, hooks and more elaborate apparatus, and a historical description of the methods and appliances that have been used would comprise a considerable portion of a treatise on the history of man.’
The images that follow show some of the capturings and also illustrate the acts of handling and selling to the general public the marine creatures most of us enjoy eating. We may hear no longer the cries of fishwives and rarely see hawkers and carts offering the shining, slippery bodies in our streets, but only a minority of eaters maintain diets that exclude the lovely flesh that for long ages has fed us and pleased us.
- John Kasmin -
Guise
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Guise is the way in which we present ourselves – the way we dress, or do our hair, or alter our manner, our behaviour, deliberately. It becomes disguise when the aim is to avoid entirely being recognised. In this collection of postcards from a century ago, a wide range of occasions for changing one’s appearance is illustrated. A few have lapsed today. We are not likely to alter our skin colour as it would cause offence; most of us do not have a chest of odd garments put aside for family charades; but donning the clothing of the opposite sex is now widely practised.
In these pictures, we can observe clowning, peace celebrations, trade processions, ancient preserved annual religious parades, imitations of well-known personalities, pretend pierrots, negro jazz types and charity agents; cross-dressers, identity gamesters, product promoters and children clad like their heroes. It was a way anyone could act out a fantasy, or plead a cause, and the postcard photos show us amusing and often surprising results. Fancy-dressing, for whatever motive, will never cease to be an element of human behaviour.
- John Kasmin
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Hair
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Hair on the human head appears to grow effortlessly, yet so much time is spent thinking about it, so much skill and money involved in dressing it and such value placed on its very existence that not only is it a marker of personality but probably the most marketable commodity we each possess although few of us actually sell our own or indeed buy the locks of others.
There are images in this collection of postcards that illustrate such acts, but it is mostly a random selection of the fashions for treating the hair upon heads and faces across the world; and the places where the arts of modelling it are practised.
- John Kasmin -
Hunt
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
I choose to use the simple word as a title for this book as it suits the style of others in my series, but it is not really accurate as there are few images of the act of hunting; most show the end, the result of the hunt, and sometimes the preparation beforehand.
The principal lure that draws people to hunt now is the chase, the pursuit, the difficult task of tracking and killing whatever is the target – or rather that is what the sportsman would say – but there are many other reasons for chasing beasts, birds and fish: for food, for profitable products such as skin, fur, horn, antler, tusk, and also to eliminate enemies, pests, dangerous rivals, as farmers declare. Some have hunted to display their prowess or to escape boredom, others to exercise an obligatory right of aristocracy.
The majority of these pictures show trophies and bodies alongside triumphant individuals – many of their victims will have practised the same death-dealing skills in their own lives, but obviously lacking photographers.
- John Kasmin -
Lens
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
It was a new way of earning a living, becoming a photographer in the early twentieth century.
There was a new demand for images of themselves and their families that had grown among the middle classes; babies were to be celebrated, activities broadcast, occasions recorded, and all this to be shared by a process that had become cheap and easy, with the mass production of cameras and film. In the heyday of postcards, the work of supplying images led to a worldwide spread of the job of photographer. This collection of pictures shows how well they advertised their presence and availability.
- John Kasmin -
Markets
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Everyone enjoys visiting markets, especially on holiday abroad when it s a chance to see a variety of foodstuffs and goods that differ from our own and, of course, the people, the faces, that one can study and relish at ease; because the particular space and atmosphere of the market place permits staring, admiring, sampling, chatting, even photo snapping as normal behaviour.
This collection of images from cards of about one hundred years ago, or more, shows markets we rarely see today, where actual producers sell their own crops directly to those who will eat them. Some of the cards are of wholesale dealings in great city agora, but most of them illustrate small human encounters often in humble settings in Africa and Asia, as well as in the agricultural paradise of old France.
- John Kasmin
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Metiers
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Before photographically illustrated magazines or newspapers, before television and facebook networks existed, in the fi rst decade or so of the twentieth century, picture postcards were sent by the hundreds of millions worldwide bearing messages between friends and families, and providing images of peoples, places and events to inform and entertain the recipients.
My interest in collecting these cards is rather similar to that I ascribe to the original senders of them but of course I enjoy too their survival intact and the hunt for them in dealers’ boxes and albums. And then the pleasure of sharing them with you.
- John Kasmin -
Music & Dance
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120 pages
19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Before photographically illustrated magazines or newspapers, before television and facebook networks existed, in the fi rst decade or so of the twentieth century, picture postcards were sent by the hundreds of millions worldwide bearing messages between friends and families, and providing images of peoples, places and events to inform and entertain the recipients.
My interest in collecting these cards is rather similar to that I ascribe to the original senders of them but of course I enjoy too their survival intact and the hunt for them in dealers’ boxes and albums. And then the pleasure of sharing them with you.
- John Kasmin -
News and Shoes
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120 pages
19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Before photographically illustrated magazines or newspapers, before television and facebook networks existed, in the first decade or so of the twentieth century, picture postcards were sent by the hundreds of millions worldwide bearing messages between friends and families, and providing images of peoples, places and events to inform and entertain the recipients.
My interest in collecting these cards is rather similar to that I ascribe to the original senders of them but of course I enjoy too their survival intact and the hunt for them in dealers’ boxes and albums. And then the pleasure of sharing them with you.
- John Kasmin -
Odd
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Perhaps you will be not only surprised, but also inspired, by the oddities included.
- John Kasmin
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Perform
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
An idiosyncratic collection of often bizarre postcards with a performing/theatrical bent from the famous art dealer. -
read
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19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Such is the case with photography too, and the main difference now is that the book is frequently replaced by a newspaper or magazine. It is said nowadays that reading, in the way that these postcards show it, is a dying activity. That will make this book a useful record of a long-lost habit.
- John Kasmin -
Scrub
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Shopfronts
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In the early decades of the last century, the majority of shops were run as a family affair by people who knew their customers and were proud of their businesses. They often lived at or near their shops and the enterprise was at the centre of their lives.These cards show that professional photographers gained work and money by persuading shopkeepers to commission pictures of themselves before their windows as a form of advertising. Using daylight dispersed with the need for expensive lighting – and the postcard photos could also serve as a form of correspondence between relations and friends. Using daylight also meant that reflections might be registered on the large glass windows and these reflections certainly charmed me when buying these postcards in France and the USA – the countries where I found more beautiful examples than elsewhere. Often, indeed, I bought the cards because of the rich and mysterious nature of the reflected world.
- John Kasmin
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Size
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120 pages
19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm -
Want
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120 pages
19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
Before photographically illustrated magazines or newspapers, before television and facebook networks existed, in the fi rst decade or so of the twentieth century, picture postcards were sent by the hundreds of millions worldwide bearing messages between friends and families, and providing images of peoples, places and events to inform and entertain the recipients.
My interest in collecting these cards is rather similar to that I ascribe to the original senders of them but of course I enjoy too their survival intact and the hunt for them in dealers’ boxes and albums. And then the pleasure of sharing them with you.
- John Kasmin -
Wreck
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120 pages
19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm
