The Stamp of Fantasy

At the start of the 20th century, long before the triumphal march of the illustrated press, photography in the form of postcards was all the rage. This volume presents the extraordinary inventiveness in postcard production that unites elements of popular culture with photographic images. At the center of attention is the intense interaction between the so-called fantasy postcards and the avant-garde art of the 1920s and 1930s, the Dadaists and Surrealists. Paul Eluard, Andre Breton and Salvador Dali were enthusiastic collectors of fantasy postcards and Hannah Hoch, Herbert Bayer, Man Ray and many others used them as material for their work.