Walking Pictures, or commonly referred to as ‘walkies,’ are pocket sized, photographic mementos taken of people walking on the street. Popular from the end of WWI to the 1970s, they...
Walking Pictures, or commonly referred to as ‘walkies,’ are pocket sized, photographic mementos taken of people walking on the street. Popular from the end of WWI to the 1970s, they were most commonly found in England, but the practice was employed across Europe and the United States. Many of these images were taken in resort towns on promenades and piers, or busy thoroughfares of tourist destinations. After snapping the picture, cameramen would entice the subjects to purchase the prints at nearby kiosks. Since the subjects were usually completely unaware of their photo being taken, the images are unposed and candid, towing the line between documentary photography and intimate portraiture. Most of the time images were printed postcard-size so that the purchaser could send their likeness to friends and family–one company even came up with the popularized phrase “Go Home on a Postcard.” The present examples were created by a French company called Societe Des Cinephotos that operated out of Strasbourg in the 1930s.