The postcard invented in 1869 in Austria Hungary for short messages very quickly enriched an image, before becoming a factor for the dissemination of photography and then very quickly a photographic montage of support. The photography exhibition stamped testament to the mounting collage aspect of photography. Professionals and amateurs photographic techniques to make it their own encouraged by industrialists who put at their disposal the necessary equipment. The result is a whole iconography based on the collage made by assembling finds curiosities and fantasy. The exhibition reflected the recreational aspect and crazy images created, both in the treatment of the topic in procedures montages, and the epistolary nature of these objects communications and exchange. The mores of an entire era are disseminated through these postcards fantasies. To achieve these visual curiosities, photographers operating publishers have resorted to a variety of technical effects - montages, superimpositions, optical distortion, big plans, etc.. -- Well-known professionals, but rather the general public.

This extraordinary visual inventiveness, deployed by the industry of the postcard in the first decades of the twentieth century, the exhibition aims to show. Some are even photomontages Dadaists made directly on postcards and sent as such. Many artists from the 1920 and 1930 have a passion for these events early industrialization images.

They have inspired Hannah Höch, Hezbert Bayer Man Ray or taking them over or cite in their work, implementing strategies diversion and ownership - two concepts, avant-garde to the present day, have ceased 'Question the nature of art.

The visual inventiveness of the postcard photo
in the early twentieth century
from 04 March to 08 June 2008

exhibition was devoted to what had been a few years before the press or the book illustrated, the first to offer support to photography a mass dissemination of the postcard.