Famous Throughout the World: An Introduction to the History of Valentine & Sons Ltd., Dundee and London and the Photographic Postcard

The Hemera curated exhibition Building an Empire: The Photographic Factory of Valentine & Sons took place at Format International Format Photography Festival 2013 from 7 March - 8 April 2013 and represented a changing cultural, social and economic landscape through the photographic images of the picture postcards mass-produced by the Valentine & Sons factories. Moving from the strong-hold of the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through two World Wars until the closure of the final Valentine factory, then owned by Hallmark, in 1994; covering over one hundred years of image-making and dissemination throughout the world. The exhibition contained a mixture of original postcards and reproductions of postcards and also revealed how older images taken in the days of the ‘view’ were re-appropriated for the burgeoning postcard industry, sometimes pre-dating the postcard itself. The text below forms an introduction to the exhibition and the history of both Valentine & Sons and the photographic postcard, and is a re-working of the exhibition information text.

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The story of the Valentine & Sons empire begins in Dundee with the birth of James Valentine in 1815. After training as a portrait painter in Edinburgh, James Valentine (1815-1879) returned to Dundee and established a successful engraving business, eventually opening a photographic studio in 1851 to add to his already flourishing enterprise as demand for portrait photographs was booming in the UK. Yet it was James’s son William Dobson Valentine (1844-1907), followed by his son Harben Valentine (1869-1949), who expanded upon these first forays into the commercial photographic industry and created the empire that dominated the photo-postcard landscape at the beginning of the twentieth century and beyond.

It was in the 1860s that William Dobson Valentine, both a chemist and landscape photographer who had trained in the studios of Francis Frith, assisted his father in steering the company through the transitions that would establish it as a dominant producer of ‘views’. Valentine & Sons, alongside another Scottish company, George Washington Wilson of Aberdeen, became known for their topographical scenes in view-card, and sometimes book, form. At this time the expansion of the railways had created the British tourism industry and these cards provided a souvenir, even evidence, of travel that fed the desire for experience and knowledge in the late nineteenth century. Photographic processes were also advancing and William Dobson Valentine oversaw the company’s transition from using the wet collodian process to a dry plate process which enhanced mobility, which was especially important when isolated views were required.

Postcard from the collection of the author, circa 1903

Then in 1870 the postcard was introduced to Britain. Initially blank, the price included postage which was printed directly onto the reverse of the card. Pictures were only added circa 1894 after the introduction of the halfpenny stamp and the legalisation of private postcard production which ended the monopoly of the Post Office, and created a commercial postcard market for the first time. These developments alongside a cultural preference for ‘views’, the maritime trade routes of the British Empire which were its postal routes, and the advancement of photo-mechanical processes for the reproduction of photographic images created the fertile landscape for an explosion of photographic postcard production.

The Valentine’s themselves moved into the postcard business finally in 1897 and the transformation of the Valentine and Sons business from craft workshop to photographic factory had begun. Utilising techniques akin to a mass-production line in the creation of their photographic postcards ensured that a vast array of images could be swiftly produced and distributed and sold for a more affordable price. By 1907 the Valentine’s had their own workforce of commercial photographers, retouchers and printers which mirrors a more general shift to industrialisation in the mass production of imagery in other parts of society such as the mass media. It may be thought that images associated with the pastoral idyll and seaside tourist destinations were the most prevalent and popular but there were also a significant amount of photographic postcards that directly depicted the industrialisation of society. Postcards of workplaces, such as factories, the tools of an industrialised society, trains and other machinery, and the workers themselves were photographed, printed and posted throughout the British Empire and beyond and shows a shift in imagery to appeal to a broader demographic. Through the postcard, the photographic image had become both commercial commodity and personal souvenir whilst fuelling the propaganda of the empire. 

Postcard from the collection of the author, circa 1913

The postcard was at its most popular in the UK from 1902 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. In 1902 the split back postcard was introduced and allowed for both message and postal address to be written on the reverse of a picture postcard which inevitably boosted sales. At this time Valentine’s offices, or factories, were opening throughout the British Empire and the company expanded into the United States as demand grew. Commercial rivalry between British publishers and those in Germany was intense and were it not for the 1914-1918 war it is possible that the Valentine’s company may never have survived the fierce competition. Military postcards superseded other postcard imagery during World War I as the dominant aesthetic and had their place in the sharing of information between loved ones; boosting morale and promoting the British military at home and abroad. Understandably though postcard use dropped significantly and, while this recovered in the period after the war, it never reached the heights of the early twentieth century and the slow and steady decline of the photographic postcard industry had begun.

Sources and further reading:

M. Boulay, Scotland’s Industrial Photographic Production, Technologies and Distribution: The Legacy of James Valentine and George Washington Wilson, St Andrews University Library, 2010

E.J. Evans & J. Richard, A Social History of Britain in Postcards (London & New York: Longman, 1980)

C. Jackson, University of St Andrews: Valentine Collection, St Andrews University Library, 2010

R.J. Morris, Scotland 1907, The Many Scotlands of Valentine and Sons Photographers (Edinburgh: Berlinn Ltd, 2007)

M. Wollaeger, ‘The Woolfs, Picture Postcards and the Propaganda of Everyday Life’ in M. Wollaeger (ed.) Modernism, Media, and Propoganda: British Narrative from 1900-1945 (Princeton and Oxford: Princetown University Press, 2006) pp.71-127

M. Willoughby, A History of Postcards (London: Studio Editions, 1992)

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Installation view, Building an Empire: The Photographic Factory of Valentine & Sons, Format International Photography Festival, 2013

REVIEW by Fangfei Chen: Illusionary Memory by Chinese Photographer Mo Yi.

Although I have seen many photographs by MO Yi before, I met him for the first time in person at the Dali International Photography Exhibition this year. There he invited my friends and I to visit his new exhibition Illusionary Memory at the Three Shadows Art Centre. 

The exhibition uses images taken from the Cultural Revolution—including photography and poster art—to discuss and explore notions of memory and history. Nearly all of the installations are made of squared industrial tiles. Each of these tiles has been painted with a small Chinese character on a single colour backing. But they can also be divided into three kinds. 

Firstly and most dominantly, tiles are glued together to make a flat surface which hangs from the wall. In the newsletter from the Three Shadows Gallery, GU Zheng emphasises that these works present the passivity of history and discusses the relationship between viewers, artworks and history. It is true that viewers are the one who decide how these works should be experienced. When you walk backwards step by step the scenes become mosaic styled images that are adaptations of identifiable Cultural Revolution scenes, such as the smiling LEI Feng, who is still promoted by the Chinese government as the great model for his willingness to help; and MAO Zedong, who is meeting his Red Guard soldiers on Tian’anmen. When you move closer to one of these works, you can identify that the Chinese characters come together to form sentences which reference slogans and talks made during the Cultural Revolution, or new revolutionary style slogans that have been created by contemporary pop culture. In this way the colours of the tiles are less important than the writing, because people cannot recognise the images anymore in a  closer distance. I enjoyed playing with these works. For GU Zheng, these images stand as both works of art, but also as representations of what we understand of a specific period (in history). Thus, the power and experience of control would stimulate viewers to consider their own roles in understanding history and memory. 

Fig. 1,2,3 Mao Zedong Mets Red Guards on Top of the Tian'anmen

However, something else drew my attention more significantly. Pink, red or yellow fur (or thread) was stuck in between tiles to resemble grass growing up from crevices in the stone floor. They look very soft and mysterious, which make the visual experience vague and ambiguous. This experience is similar to Chinese attitudes to the Cultural Revolution nowadays. People love and hate the event at the same time. But their opinions would not (and do not intend to) stop people benefitting from dealing with the subject. Mao and his red guards have became the popular themes for the now booming Chinese contemporary arts, or are merely served as a cash cows for restaurants. MO Yi—the artist—suggests to us his own understanding, impression and emotion toward the Cultural Revolution in China. This opinion could be applied to other parts of history in a materialised China.  

Fig. 4 A View of Illusionary Memory

Furthermore, some red tiles are glued together to form a ballot box, which is placed at the middle of the gallery space. This colour perfectly matches the images on the wall, as the Chinese government has always been called the ‘Red’ regime and the Cultural Revolution has been understood as a ‘Red’ revolution. In many countries, the ballot box is supposed to stand for democratic power. However, this meaning is questionable in China, especially given a time like the Cultural Revolution where there were continuous power struggles between MAO and other leading officials in the Communist party. Votes from the public are limited. Looking through the slot in the ballot box, audiences can see a video inside which shows a hand writing some phrases backward in Chinese, such as the slogan “to rebel is justified”. The way of writing might be the artist’s criticism to the event. 

Fig. 5 A View of Illusionary Memory

This ballot box is linked to the images on the wall through neat rows of squared tiles on the floor. The contradiction is obviously between democracy (ballot box) and dictatorship (the products of the Cultural Revolution). Each of the tiles on the floor shows a whole image of posters or photographs that were produced during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. They present the historical records most held and lead viewers to explore reinterpretations by the artist. Therefore, all the installations in the gallery space are related to each other. The relationships and contradictions between the works, allows viewers to step into an independent time and space, which is neither going back to the historic events nor staying in 2013. The tiles on the floor link and form the whole structure of MO Yi’s historical perception. 

The decision to use visual materials and texts from the Cultural Revolution might sound cheesy for many people but it is crucial to this exhibition. This extreme event should be familiar to Chinese audiences. However, when we look at these artworks and look back into history, we realise how vague they are. 

Fig. 6,7,8 Looking at the Mo Yi's Works from Different Distances

Mo Yi was born and raised in Tibet. His works became well-known since 1990s in Asia. To know more about Mo Yi, please check out this article by the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/art-and-life-in-china-blur-for-photographer-mo-yi-2017493.html