Page 153 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

Expanded Media - and the MediaPlex 153/206
Léopold-Émile Reutlinger: Art Nouveau Postcards from 1890
These early examples of what came to be known 50 years later as ‘graphic design’ show how successfully the enterprising and entrepreneurial photographer Reutlinger took over his father’s studio in 1890 and established a highly lucrative postcard business, centering upon portraits of famous actresses, models, singers - the emerging photo-celebrities of the Belle Epoque - and combining ornate art-nouveau style graphics with photo-montage, swirling calligraphic lettering and colour tinting (hand-coloured portraits, tinted graphics). Reutlinger appears to be one of the signature commercial photographer/designers of this period, a time in photographic history that marked the beginning of ‘painterly’ or pictorialist photography..The ‘beginnings’ of modern graphic design are complex. Philip Meggs’ has carefully plotted the origins of modernist graphics in his excellent Megg’s History of Graphic Design (2005), and includes the ‘private press’ work of Morris and Emery Walker in the UK in the 1880s and 1890s, the work of the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna, the origins of corporate identity in the work of Peter Behrens, and of course later the invention of what we recognise as 20th century graphic design in the work of the De Stijl group, the Russian (USSR) constructivists (including El Lizzitsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Gustav Klucis and others), and the numerous experimental graphics made at the Bauhaus from 1919 - 1929.
The intricacy of these mass-produced portrait post-cards – each one featuring a popular actress or performer as a photographic portrait embodied in a lavish art nouveau design: “He invited women from opera, theatres and the varieties like the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergères to get portrayed by him, mostly in gorgeous robes, which often served as leading patterns in fashion style. Numerous series of portraits of stars, starlets and anonymous beauties were produced. Léopold created the famous Reutlinger-signature and used it from 1895 on all of his photographic work. His commercial success was also based on the creation of extensively reproduced postcards, selling all over the world by different publishers.”