Antique & Vintage Postcards

A powerful bronze man strides forward in full exertion, hoisting another figure overhead in a dynamic diagonal that seems to defy gravity — this is one of Gustav Vigeland's iconic bridge sculptures from Frogner Park in Oslo, photographed in rich silver-gelatin black and white by Elisabeth, the celebrated Norwegian documentary and art photographer whose crisp tonal range here catches every sinew and surface texture of the cast bronze against a dramatically clouded sky. The real-photo postcard format places this firmly in the wartime or immediate postwar era, when Vigeland's monumental sculptural program — the largest ever made by a single artist — was newly complete and already drawing international fascination; the Vigelandsbrua (Vigeland Bridge) sculptures were installed 1926–1943.