Vintage Travel Posters: Old Photographs, New Posters
Series · Vintage Travel Posters
Vintage Travel Posters: Old Photographs, New Posters
Every poster in this series starts with a real photograph: a postcard from 1932, a colour print sold to travellers in the 1890s, a stereo card of 1906, or one of our own pictures of the Galician coast. We redraw each view in the style of the golden age of the travel poster, with Art Nouveau frames and summer skies. Here is the whole series, with the photograph behind every poster.
Galicia: the rías
Galicia in the print shop →-
1Fene, Paisaje de Maniños
Fene, Ría de Ferrol
From a 1932 postcard of the parish of ManiñosThe first poster in the series: three men on a country road above the Ría de Ferrol, recast as the travel poster the view never had.
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2Ferrol, Juan Sebastián Elcano
Ferrol
From our own photograph of the training ship arriving in FerrolThe Spanish Navy’s four-masted training ship sails into the ría, with the Castillo de La Palma in front and San Felipe behind.
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3Pontedeume, The Eume River and Bridge
Pontedeume
From our own night photograph of the medieval bridgeThe old stone bridge over the Eume and the fishing town behind it, turned from a night photograph into a Belle Époque poster.
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4Redes, Ares
Redes, Ría de Ares
From our own photograph of the fishing portThe fishing village of Redes on the Ría de Ares, its houses built right down to the water.
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5Combarro at Dusk
Combarro, Ría de Pontevedra
From our own photograph, with a watercolour versionGranite hórreos on the shore of the Ría de Pontevedra at dusk: photograph, watercolour and poster side by side.
Europe in the Belle Époque
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6Paris, The Eiffel Tower and the Trocadéro
Paris
From an 1890s photochrom in the Library of CongressThe tower barely a decade old, seen from the gardens of the old Trocadéro palace.
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7Venice, The Grand Canal and Santa Maria della Salute
Venice
From an 1890s photochrom in the Library of CongressThe great domed church at the mouth of the Grand Canal, with a gondola and a moored steamboat.
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8Amalfi, From the Cappuccini
Amalfi
From an 1890s photochrom in the Library of CongressThe town and its harbour seen from the old Capuchin convent above the sea.
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9Lisbon, Praça do Comércio and the Tagus
Lisbon
From a historical photograph in the Library of CongressThe great square rebuilt after the earthquake of 1755, open to the river, with its triumphal arch.
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10Vienna, The Staatsoper and the Ringstrasse
Vienna
From a 1906 Keystone stereograph in the Library of CongressThe opera house of the Mahler years on the Ring, moved from a winter street to a summer afternoon.
How a poster is made
We start from the original photograph and keep what it shows: the angle, the buildings, the boats and the people in the street. Then we change everything a camera of the time could not give: colour, light, weather and season. The frame, the lettering and the small vignettes in the corners come from the posters that railway and steamship companies printed between the 1890s and the 1930s. The historical photographs are in the public domain, and each story names its source.
See the views for yourself
Five of the posters come from the Rías Altas and the Ría de Pontevedra in Galicia: Fene, Ferrol, Pontedeume and Redes lie within half an hour’s drive of each other around the Rías de Ferrol, Ares and Betanzos. Combarro is further south, near Pontevedra.
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