How a humble picture postcard can personify an era was delightfully well realised in, ‘The postcard age’, now showing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, US. Drawing on the riches of (Chairman Emeritus of the Estée Lauder Cosmetics Company) Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Collection, the exhibition in conjunction with a strikingly illustrated publication The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, traces how historical and cultural themes of the modern age were reflected on the billions of postcards produced from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Everything from advertising to beautiful women, travel, World War I, fashion, and social commentary is represented, in full-colour reproductions that showcase the dazzling variety and creativity of the period. It's easy to see how, for a time, postcards captured the world's attention, riding the wave of change and early globalisation. As the authors state, “Postcards ‘provide unusually vivid access to the past, its concerns and obsessions.”

Lauder began collecting postcards from the age of seven, and since then has assembled one of the finest holdings of the medium. It ranges in date from 1872 to the present day and includes postcards from around the world. “The MFA shares my vision of the postcard as both a modern art form and a revolutionary means of communication,” said Leonard A. Lauder.

“This exhibition highlights both the beauty of the postcard and its historical importance. The MFA’s commitment to exploring visual culture brings postcards into a dialogue with other forms of modern art — like posters and books as well as prints and paintings. In this way, what have been viewed previously as mere pieces of ephemera can come to be seen as dynamic and exciting cultural objects,” he added.

During its early introductory years some critics decried the lack of formality and warned of the demise of the well-written letter, others celebrated the ease, beauty, variety, and efficiency afforded by the cards, which had an image on the front and space for the address on the back. Printed on plain stock and measuring 5 x 3 inches, the modest missive/postcard was introduced in 1869 by the Austro-Hungarian postal service as a fast and inexpensive mode of communication. It soon became a worldwide sensation, exploding into a mass medium which revolutionised the way people connected to one another, especially in the decades between 1890 and 1910.

In 1903 alone, more than a billion cards passed through the German postal system. They were a truly democratic art form, accessible to a wide audience for just pennies, and provided a new arena for artistic experimentation. In addition, they chronicled social change and served as a vehicle for commerce and propaganda.

This exhibition takes visitors back in time to a tumultuous era in Europe and the Americas, when industrialisation, urbanisation, immigration, and shifting viewpoints about culture, class, women’s rights, and new money shook society. The dynamism of the era was embodied in the postcard mania, which reflected the obsession with novelty and the ‘need for speed’, while making inexpensive communication available to all.

The craze for celebrity was fed by postcards, which put a face to a name and provided people around the world with images of notables that they could collect, from royalty and revolutionaries, to presidents and millionaires. Many postcards poked fun at the world’s leaders. The evolving role of women in modern society also played out on the postcard, where they were portrayed as fashion icons, saucy coquettes, accomplished athletes, and instigators of social change. But among the works most telling of the times are several unflattering depictions of angry, finger-wagging women who want the right to vote, including a solution of the suffragette question.

An obsession with technological change was reflected in postcards that celebrated the latest and greatest advances. Oil and gas-fuelled machines, electricity, and new forms of entertainment and communications were fodder for artists and advertisers. Images of light bulbs, speeding cars, soaring airplanes, and modern appliances appealed to the consumer’s interest in all things that would transform their lives.

Politics always loomed large on postcards, and throughout the era cards had been used to shape public opinion, but with the coming of World War I — the Great War — postcards with patriotic themes flourished. Numerous examples in exhibition depict troops mobilising in Europe, soldiers at the front, and families waiting for their loved ones to return.

By 1918, the horrors of the war cast a pall over the postcard craze. The passion for the novelty it represented had faded a bit, compounded by a shortage of supplies, disrupted production (many of the top producers were German), and destruction of factories during the war. Still, postcards remained important from the 1920s through the beginning of the World War II — though by then, the earliest cards were already becoming tokens of nostalgia for a bygone age, pursued by a new generation of collectors.

“Postcards were a fast and modern way to communicate, but they endure as objects of striking design and extraordinary wit. They were the people’s art, and excited such passion that postcard collecting was often referred to as an addiction. Postcards made images and ideas accessible more broadly than they had ever been before,” said Lynda Klich, co-curator of the exhibition.