VIEWS OF AMERICA AT NIGHT

I recently bought a fascinating book called Postcards of the Night: Views of American Cities by John A. Jakle, a professor of geography at the University of Illinois. The book was published in 2003 by the Museum of New Mexico Press.

Page after page of beautiful nighttime postcard images from all across the U. S. There's one of the Pittsburgh Pirates stadium at night that I'd love to own. And some amazing shots of San Francisco at night, including Chinatown.

The introduction written by Mr. Jakle is fascinating. I'll quote just one small bit:

"Postcard publishers engaged freely in the alteration or manipulation of photographs, producing highly "fictionalized" pictorial art masquerading as realistic. Touch-up work produced cleaner, simplified images, making the places pictured seem less complicated and tidier and, perhaps, more salable as postcard views. Conversely, places might be made to appear more complicated and thus, presumably, more interesting.... Many if not most postcards, she concluded were a 'composite of fantasy, boosterism, wishful thinking, simplification, and outright lie.' Especially was nighttime postcard depiction a product of revision. As a matter of fact, most nighttime views were contrived from daytime photographs and were not, strictly speaking, nighttime photos at all." (SOURCE: Postcards of the Night: Views of American Cities)

Just as I often suspected when looking at some of the nighttime skies, they were fake.

And to read more about the book simply go to the second item down in the Tattered and Lost What-Not Suggestions column to the left.

This is my contribution to this weeks Postcard Friendship Friday.

Click on either image to see it larger.

Over the next few days I'll be featuring some more of my nighttime postcards.