Minnesota
has Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Blue Ox. Florida has its gators, the world’s
largest reptiles. And, of course, they say that everything is larger than life
in Texas. But in California, home of the world’s tallest trees and an
agricultural wonderland, it’s the plant life—cultivated or wild—that grows
really, really big.
Image
manipulations began long before the digital magic of Photoshop made it possible
for everyone to become visual fantabulists and tellers of tall tales. A prime
example can be seen in the exaggeration (tall tale) postcards that first
appeared in Fresno in 1905. The appeal of outsized produce and livestock struck
a chord throughout the West, where many printers began publishing “Bunyonesque
cards utilizing props and darkroom legerdemain,” as Lewis
Baer of the San Francisco Post Card Club has described the cards.
CHS’s
exaggeration cards are pristine, never-scribbled-on, and never-mailed examples
of the maker’s craft. They are mostly the productions of the San Francisco
printer Edward H. Mitchell. Part of CHS’s Kemble Collections on WesternPrinting and Publishing, these and more postcards are accessible to researchers
in the North Baker Research Library at our headquarters in San Francisco.
