The exhibition project The Front Side: Color Photo Postcards in the USSR, 1950–1970s at ROSPHOTO presents more than ninety color photo postcards from the museum’s collection. Published from works by Soviet photographers, these postcards offer a fresh perspective on the oeuvre of celebrated image-makers, including those best known for their black-and-white photographs of the wartime years.

The situation changed on 3 February 1953 with the adoption of the decree “On the Improvement of the Publication of Mass Artistic Reproductions and Literature on Art.” As part of this initiative, the publishing house IZOGIZ (State Publishing House of Fine Art) was established and tasked with significantly increasing both the production and the quality of postal postcards.

Cheerful images of children, picturesque cityscapes, and views of nature became among the most popular postcard subjects. At the same time, the genre of the “educational postcard” emerged, transforming the postcard into a tool for learning and discovery. In this way, the postcard became firmly embedded in everyday life in the Soviet Union.

By the mid-1950s, photographic technologies were experiencing a period of remarkable growth. Color photographic processes became increasingly accessible, domestic color films entered production, and specialized publications appeared to help photographers master the complexities of color developing and printing.

During this period, photographers working with publishing houses often acted as executors of editorial assignments rather than as independent authors. In postcard editions printed in hundreds of thousands of copies, one frequently encounters misattributed authorship, arbitrary cropping, distorted color reproduction, and even reversed compositions. Yet despite these challenges, many images still reveal a distinctive artistic vision and a unique photographic style.

The postcards presented in the exhibition were produced in enormous print runs — hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of copies. They served not only as a means of exchanging greetings and news, but also as a way of sharing impressions and stories about places their senders had visited. The reverse side often preserves deeply personal messages, and at times even traces of individual tragedies.

This exhibition focuses on the front side of the postcard — the photograph itself. These images accompanied people through joyful and difficult moments of their lives, often finding their way into family albums while remaining, at the same time, works created by some of the most distinguished masters of photography.

The collaboration between photographers and postcard publishers remains a relatively understudied field. This exhibition represents a first step toward exploring this area, and we would like to express our gratitude to those who contributed to its preparation:

Vitaly P. Tretyakov and the Educational and Research Center Children’s Postcard Museum at Pushkin Leningrad State University for generously providing research materials and offering expert consultation throughout the preparation of the exhibition;
Marina Radchenko, a master’s student in Applied Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence, for conducting quantitative research on publicly accessible data relating to Soviet postcards.