In the beginning of the 20th century, long before the triumph of the illustrated press, photographs were circulated on a massive scale in the form of postcards. This volume presents the exceptional inventiveness of the postcard printing industry, which combined elements of pop culture with the photographic image. At its centre is the splendid interaction between so-called fantasy-postcards and the avant-garde art of the 20’s and 30’s, the Dadaists and Surrealists. For creating the visual curiosities of the fantasy-postcards, photographers worked with montage, double exposure, optical distortions, close-ups and other technical tricks. Paul Eluard, André Breton, or Salvador Dalí were passionate collectors of fantasy-cards. Hannah Höch, Herbert Bayer, Man Ray and many others included them in or used them as templates for their work.

Most of the featured postcards are examples from the collections Peter Weiss and Gérard Lévy.