Manipulating photographs is as old as photography.
William H. "Dad" Martin worked in a photography studio in Ottawa, KS at the beginning of the previous century. Just as travel postcards were becoming an extremely popular form of inexpensive communication, Martin experimented with trick photography.
He quickly developed technical skill and a visual form of humor which struck gold with midwesterners. The postcards allowed people to laugh at their precarious grip on life in the disaster-prone plains.
His Martin Postcard Company produced 10,000 postcards per day. They were printing so many postcards, they purchased photo emulsion chemicals by the railcar.
He sold his company a few years later. His tongue-in-cheek postcards made him a wealthy man. He is considered the father of the tall-tale postcard.
Take a walk with Birkenstock.
