Women’s History Month: A Wild Night in a Hansom Cab, 1895
With the approach of April Fool’s Month (one day is not nearly enough!), it seems appropriate to conclude this year’s Women’s History Month coverage, with a bit of silliness — Photo Funnies from the April 27th, 1895 issue of the New York City publication, The Standard.
Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read the words within them.
The Standard was one of a handful of 1890s/early 1900s periodicals, that fairly regularly featured photo funnies (or, “fumetti”). Sequential photographic comic strips were hardly something new — going back to the late 1850s in the format of series of stereographic cards — but it wasn’t really until the 1890s that printing technology allowed for mass, cheap reproduction of photographs in magazines and newspapers. I suspect there was a certain degree of overlap between printed photo funnies and stereograph sequences (there are certainly instances I’ve spotted of cartoonists stealing from stereograph sequences — and vice-versa). And even more likely, an overlap in camera crews, actors, and studio sets involved. But I’ve not yet explored that possibility.
At any rate, the type of comedic material The Standard (and at least one other parallel publication) regularly featured — as you can see in the example shown here — tended to be more out-there risque than American & British (at least) stereoviews tended to go.
The “sequence” of events in these photographs (and to be more accurate, some of these have combined images of photographed players, placed atop/in front of cartoon or drawn backgrounds; with the last scene, below, being purely cartoon), is somewhat artificial. They all refer to the same/similar incident, but I’ve rearranged them to read in a more fun, sequential manner — this is not the order they appeared in the magazine.
Finally, I’d like to point out the similarity of the above 1895 photographic comedy, with the below panel from an 1851 comic book I posted here earlier this month… (Clicking on the below picture, will take you to that comic book.)
NYStandard
— Doug
