Featured Galleries: Early Burlington Photographers

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Burlington photographers C.H. Bessey and B. Benton Barker captured views of the city and its residents for souvenir publications. Presented here are a few of the Llewellyn Collection's numerous postcards by Barker and Bessey. Both began producing postcards within a few years of an 1898 United States law allowing privately published postcards. In their earliest cards, wide borders provide room for handwritten messages; the backs were devoted to the recipient’s address. Full-bleed images (running edge to edge) were made possible after 1907, when postcard backs were first divided into spaces for the address and message.