Where do babies come from? An answer was drawn on the many postcards from the early 20th century

Tammo Schuringa (61), artist: ‘I’m kind of a hoarder. On the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam I saw more and more stalls with postcards appear. Many booksellers switched to this, because maps are small, light, convenient to transport and it earned at least as much. I bought a few, but after a while I had seen the offer and started looking online.

‘For ten years now I’ve been collecting everything that makes me think: huh? What is this again? Women with beach balls. Women in men’s clothing. Alpine giants. German children with Schultüte, a cone of gifts that you get when you go to primary school. All things with a somewhat surrealistic character.

‘On the occasion of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1989, the French newspaper Le Figaro printing cards with the Eiffel Tower on them. They were sold as souvenirs on every floor of the wonder of the world. These were the first illustrated French postcards.

‘After that, the supply grew spectacularly. The golden age of the postcard took place roughly between 1900 and 1918. In 1905 alone, 7 billion cards were sent worldwide. They were also collected en masse, as I do now. Cartomania was the hype. Production was highest in Europe, especially in Germany.

‘Everything was depicted: landscapes, opera stars, couples in love, means of transport, flora and fauna, art. And babies, in thousands of variations. I have now brought together the baby cards and the stories behind them in a book.

‘On cards under the collective name bébés multiples are surrealistic fantasies with a lot of babies in the set. Babies on the moon, babies on a ship, babies in the crow’s nest, babies lying on a wave, on the beach, in zeppelins, in balloons, on trains. Many babies in means of transport anyway. They showed an imaginary world strongly reminiscent of the stories of Jules Verne (1828-1905) or of Le voyage dans la lune (1902) by film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861-1938).

‘In the belle époque there was a huge appetite for the new and unknown. In 1900 booklets were published about what the year 2000 would look like. Everything flew, even mailmen. There was the realization that we had achieved something through all the technological developments, but also that much more was about to happen. You can see that optimism on the cards. To increase the entertainment value, babies were added to show what wonderful worlds you can create. Surrealist painters would later use these postcards for inspiration.

‘There was also a signed answer to the question where babies come from. We know the stork as a baby carrier, but there are many more sources from which babies can sprout. They grow in kale, flowers and as beans in legumes. They are in wells, hollow trees and reed beds. Crawl from eggs and snails. Those sites are always somewhere – handy – in the vicinity of the house where he was born. They were metaphors for conception and childbirth, about which there was much ignorance and shame at the time.

‘When the Australian photographer Anne Geddes became world famous in the late 1990s with her photos of babies in coals and flowers, she was probably inspired by these babies. I find those photos quite one-dimensional and commercial. Then the baby who crawls out of an egg (“The world? I don’t know. I take a quick look at it”) and concludes that there is no ball to it (“Damn. I’m going back!”) is still a lot nicer?

“Or the pugnacious baby soldiers who burst out of an egg, guns at the ready, shouting, ‘Are there any Krauts left?’

‘How many cards do I have? That’s a painful question. Fifty thousand. They are in fruit and vegetable boxes in my studio. As I get older I sometimes wonder if I will continue with it. I’m unstoppable, I’m afraid. I just like to collect beautiful things.’