Melina Moe and Victoria Nebolsin write: “What object might visually meld a couple into lovers, individuals into a family? In the early twentieth century, the subjects often chose books. Reading takes many postures. Performances of reading, perhaps even more. These portrait postcards present readers hunched over a book in a bar, reclined in a hospital bed, and seated stiffly on a front porch. There are groups sharing a newspaper in the breakroom and young people with disregarded books on a picnic blanket. Some portraits suggest engrossed readers, while others show sitters who hold their book limply, like an unwanted package.”