Kasmin's Postcards - Guise

Paperback
120 pages
19.4 x 14.4 x 1.4 cm

Guise is the way in which we present ourselves – the way we dress, or do our hair, or alter our manner, our behaviour, deliberately. It becomes disguise when the aim is to avoid entirely being recognised. In this collection of postcards from a century ago, a wide range of occasions for changing one’s appearance is illustrated. A few have lapsed today. We are not likely to alter our skin colour as it would cause offence; most of us do not have a chest of odd garments put aside for family charades; but donning the clothing of the opposite sex is now widely practised.

In these pictures, we can observe clowning, peace celebrations, trade processions, ancient preserved annual religious parades, imitations of well-known personalities, pretend pierrots, negro jazz types and charity agents; cross-dressers, identity gamesters, product promoters and children clad like their heroes. It was a way anyone could act out a fantasy, or plead a cause, and the postcard photos show us amusing and often surprising results. Fancy-dressing, for whatever motive, will never cease to be an element of human behaviour.

- John Kasmin