JUSTICE HOWARD — Soho Galleries Postcard, San Francisco, 1996

Issued by Soho Galleries on Valencia Street, San Francisco, in 1996, this photographic postcard reproduces an image by American photographer Justice Howard: horns, leather, boots and an emphatically staged female body rendered in Howard’s severe black-and-white language.

Howard emerged from modelling before moving behind the camera, becoming closely associated with fetish, tattoo and erotic photography. In 1995 she mounted her first solo exhibition, Black & White & Brutal, in Los Angeles. This postcard appeared the following year, at precisely the point when her images were moving between gallery exhibition, specialist magazines and the commercial circulation of cards and printed matter.

The reverse is almost as good as the image. Printed simply: © 1996 Justice Howard · © 1996 Soho Galleries · 1218 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 · PC380.

Soho Galleries occupied an intriguing position within Valencia Street’s 1990s countercultural economy: part gallery, part card and gift shop, distributing photographs such as Howard’s as inexpensive multiples. By 1997, contemporary fetish publications were specifically directing readers toward Justice Howard postcards produced through Soho Galleries.

What was once something bought from a rack for the price of a postcard now survives as evidence of how these images circulated before the internet flattened the distinction between photograph, reproduction, advertisement and collectible.

The photograph remained the same.
Its placement did not.

10.5 × 15 cm · Photographic postcard · Soho Galleries, San Francisco · PC380

Condition: Unmailed example with original printed verso. Light age toning consistent with period.