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My friend Ross showed me this beautiful collection of Japanese postcards from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Here is a little information about the postcards themselves:
“One of the most stunning revelations of the picture postcards that the Japanese produced en masse is how extraordinarily “modern” and even avant-garde many of them were…Explosions, hot-air military observation balloons, Russian and Japanese war flags, enemy gunboats, even sinking warships and landmines became transformed into emblems of beauty, modernity, and cutting-edge creativity…The “blank” spaces on most graphics—often aesthetically attractive in themselves—were where messages were written. In some cases, the personal message was handwritten right over the image.”
Images: Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Japanese Postcards at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
the tokyo files archives 東京ファイル 