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22.00USD
This charming image of a maiden in the woods, just at the moment she crosses the magical boundary of a stream, is imbued with a Fae spirit. Surely the Belle Epoque performer known as "Doll," portraying the young woman crossing the foot bridge so daintily could be a wood nymph or some similar sort of magical being. We love the way in which the magical is suggested in this image by Reutlinger, as in so many other images from this time period, without the introduction of a single truly fantastic element. These images make us feel much as we might when reading a fairy tale, that at any moment something truly marvelous will happen.
Nymphs, Naiads, Dryads, and Faerie folk so often cropped up in La Belle Époque, and Leopold Reutlinger, the Belle Époque photographer, was responsible for bringing thousands of these “fantaisies” into being. Found throughout the period from popular entertainment to commercial advertising, fantastic images by Reutlinger and others reflected a blossoming of western occult experimentation and a yearning for magic, for myth made manifest.
The very palpable embrace of antiquity, most probably reflected a turning away from the onslaught of the industrial explosion and a movement toward the real, and imagined, simplicity of earlier times. With this came a sense of the possibility of magic, and the ubiquity of images like this one, in which we wouldn't be terribly surprised to see faeries or woodland sprites cavorting about. Even more interesting, we think, is the fact that this new medium, the picture postcard, itself a product of the new technologies, made available to anyone with a penny or two the possibility of possessing such an image, one in which an obviously very real human being is pictured in a fairyland setting.
We take this mingling of the fantastic with the real for granted today, of course, but think about it for just a moment, at the turn of the 20th century, this was all entirely new. Prior to this time, fantastic photo images of human beings were seldom accessible to the common man, woman or child, and we cannot take lightly the effect of "likeness" on the human psyche. It's worth considering the effect this mass phenomenon had on society. Mass phenomenon, you wonder? Really? Absolutely. Just as an example, in the United States alone, "the official figures from the U.S. Post Office for their fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, cite 677,777,798 postcards mailed. At that time the total population of the United States was only 88,700,000!" (Thanks to emotionscards.com for their fascinating article that provided us with that factoid.)
This card was published by NPG, die Neue Photographische Gesellschaft of Berlin, and utilized the extremely effective Oranotype method for photo reproduction, developed by photographer and inventor A.G. Steglitz. Very nice condition on this one.
Please examine our high res scans for detail.
Postage is for first class shipping in a secure photo mailer, and we happily combine shipping on all paper goods. If you purchase two cards, we will refund the postage on the second card, and when you purchase three or more cards from us at the same time, your shipping will be entirely free, except for international orders which, because of sudden increases in international shipping rates will still be charged one card's shipping fees on orders of three or more.
And please come visit our blog at:
redpoulaine.blogspot.com
where we post biographical and historical tidbits, images of cards and photographs for sale, some already sold but remembered fondly, related images of historical interest and sometimes even images of items that have not yet arrived in the shop, but that are expected to arrive soon, as well as coupon codes, links to other related sites, and more!
