Phantom image

[pmcdaniels]

Hello everyone,

My wife purchase a box of old photographic postcards at an auction recently and was curous about the imagery in one of the cards.
The postcard shows a soldier, appearantly WW1 vintage in uniform. Upon turning the card slightly a very obvious image of an old man in spectales is seen, like a phantom in the background of the photo. This image is not a fluke. it is a real face. Could anyone tell us about this effect.

Thanks

[About Postcards]

It's difficult to answer without seeing the card but here are some of the possibilities.

It could be a 'Hold to Light' postcard, sometimes abbreviated to HTL. They were produced in multiple layers such that when held to a light source the additional image appears.

It could be a heat activated card, intended to be held near a candle and the temperature change would result in the 'invisible' image appearing. Once heated, the image persisted in a shadowy form.

There were also scratch cards where some of the image was revealed by abrading the surface and then there were optical illusion cards where the image changed when viewing from a certain (usually oblique) angle.

Most of the above card types had instructions or an explanatory series name, sometimes just a single line of text, printed on them.

You mention it as being photographic, that suggests some form of optical illusion card but it's hard to be sure.

If you can provide a picture it might help, failing that details of any text printed on either the back or front the card might help.

[About Postcards]

One further thought.

If the postcard is photographic, it could be a one off image using masking. There would have been two negatives, one of the soldier, one of the older man. When developing the original print the photographer will have masked out (covered) part of the photo card when exposing it to the first negative and then would use a mask to cover the exposed part of the print while the second image was exposed.

Hope this helps.