FREDERICKTOWN — My latest collectible discovery is what paper collectors call an RPPC: a real photo postcard.
Unlike mass-production postcards, RPPCs were typically made locally by a photographer who would take a picture and then develop it onto card stock, which could then be mailed.
In 1903, the Kodak company came out with a camera which took photos directly onto postcard stock paper, leading to a boost in the number of RPPCs.
A regular photographer developing pictures onto postcard stock could make multiple copies, while a lay person using a Kodak postcard camera would be creating one-of-a-kind postcards.
Both are highly collectible today, because even if a photographer could theoretically make lots of copies of photo postcards, they rarely did.
It is hard to tell if the image we’re looking at today is one made by a professional or an amateur.
They did a good job getting a deep focus in the image, from the dog in front of the farmer and his horses, all the way back past the house, fence, and outbuildings to the hillside horizon which can be seen in the distance. The photographer found that sweet spot where the farmer can be clearly seen in the shadows, while the hillside isn’t so overexposed that it would disappear.
On the other hand, I cropped the photo because the photo didn’t fit the original postcard, leaving over a half inch of blank card at one end. I would think that a Kodak postcard camera would have automatically set the right size, but I’m not familiar enough with the process to know for sure.
Perhaps instead, it was a professional photographer transferring a different-sized negative to postcard, leaving the extra space.
Can anyone identify the farm?
It is a one-and-a-half story house, perched atop a hill. Another, larger hill rises in the distance. A couple small outbuildings are down the first hill. In the house’s yard, a couple of trees stand. If the house is still there, those could be large trees by now.
Because of the deep focus scale, and because of an extended patch of non-shaded grass, I suspect the farmer and his animals are actually standing in a yard across the road from the house, which would suggest that the house stood fairly close to the road. For the farmer and the horses to be that large, they have to be standing a considerable distance from the house.
Such a successful capture of a deep field of focus again suggests a professional photographer.
My favorite little detail is on the trunk of the large tree which is shading the farmer. It appears to be a small birdhouse, attached directly to the trunk. Looking further at the shadow cast by the tree, and considering the farmhouses were often (though not always) built to get maximum sunlight on the front of the house, that could mean that the house was on the north side of the road, facing south, and that this photograph was taken in the morning.
The card was mailed, without message, to Cecily Clark of Centerburg in May of 1909.
Does anyone recognize this farm?
