The style of bathing costume postcard changes completely. The postcards are modernist in appearance, and the women are depicted much more as sexual beings.
In Paris in the 1920’s a number of publishing houses (Rex, Noyer, Sapi, and Dix) created a style of postcard which was uniquely photographic.
Models were chosen who were pretty and seductive, photographers used a high key, often plain white background, with a blush of colour added to top left or right.
The tinting artists applied very bold and striking colours to swimming costumes and bathing hats, whilst leaving the face and body completely uncoloured.
Sometimes the identical pose was used on several cards, but with different colours applied to costumes and hats. |  |
| Although the plain high key background became the predominant modernist style, there was a limited use of painted backgrounds.
These were muted, out of focus scenes of rocky coves. The exuberant use of colour lifts the model away from the dark cliffs and setting sun. But the effect was strangely mannered.
What was modern, clean and with no pretence of naturalism in the high key photographs, became artificial or surreal in these cards with lurid painted backdrops. |
