July 3, 1911 A

July 3, 1911 A

Wreck at Point Judith. Narragansett Pier, R.I.

Notes: Shipwrecks were New England’s version of (European) ruins (and what counted as picturesque). Bosselman was described as a manufacturer of “souvenirs.” Probably most publishers of post cards were described using these same words. That naming would seem to imply that post cards were conceived as memory devices, however, these storage units for images were sent off to friends and relatives who had no prior experience of the location, effectively subverting the idea that the card served as the buyer’s mnemonic device. A.C. Bosselman’s died in his late 50’s in 1929, about 8 years after his son, Carl. The elder Bosselman had brought his boy into the business. Carl managed a Washington, DC branch of the company. While in New York he fractured his skull in a fight. His father believed his son had been murdered and offered a $1,000 reward for help finding the killer, but Carl’s death was never conclusively explained. Germans seem to have had a huge piece of the early post card industry, in part, I think, because of their superior command of the camera technologies (which probably included the reproduction processes).

A.C. Bosselman & Co., New York