Bob Petley launched Petley Studios in 1945 with twelve comic postcards. Then, he spent the next four decades photographing the mid-century Southwest from behind a windshield. As I catalogue our Arizona collection, it seems every other card is a Petley production.
Bob Petley was born in 1912 in Akron, Ohio. His father developed products for Goodrich Tire and Rubber, including an early balloon tire. Bob drew posters, threw javelin, and boxed. Arthritis brought him to Arizona in 1943. He took a job in display advertising at the Arizona Republic and left it two years later. In 1945, with wartime travel restrictions lifting, he launched Petley Studios, Inc. from his home.
The first cards sold fast, and Petley had wanderlust. He loaded a station wagon with camera equipment and stopped at hotels, restaurants, motor lodges, civic buildings, desert overlooks, and canyon rims. He met people and made deals along the way. He later traded the wagon for a Lincoln Continental, but the method stayed the same: one man, a camera, every road in Arizona.
Petley Studios and mid-century Arizona grew up together. Bob started shooting in 1945. Over the next four decades, Arizona’s population tripled. New hotels opened in Phoenix and Scottsdale. Civic buildings went up in Tucson. Motor courts lined the highway approaches to every city. Petley photographed all of it. At its peak, the company sold more than 25,000,000 cards annually through roughly 3,500 dealers across Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas, southwestern Colorado, and eastern California. The catalog reached more than 1,100 known designs for Arizona alone.
Petley was the first postcard publisher to use a Kodak Kodachrome negative for production. Those burnt oranges, deep turquoises, and brilliant blues are not retouched. Kodachrome produced them. A Petley scenic held next to a competing card from the same decade is warmer and more saturated.
The small set here is just the beginning of the sorting and sifting ahead. It’s a short stack by Arizona city. Indian Pipe Cactus National Monument visitor center shows a a flat-roofed brick federal building with breeze-block detailing and 1960s cars in the lot. A Tucson pool scene with the saturated horizontals of a resort afternoon. A Slo-Motion golf cart, straight from the promotional playbook of Sunbelt leisure culture. Hotels, restaurants, and scenic views fill the rest.
Petley sold the business in 1984. He died in Scottsdale in 2006 at 93. Several of his original comic cards are now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Individual cards regularly trade for their enduring content and collectible nature, but no single institution holds a comprehensive set. In 1994, the Tucson Post Card Exchange Club arrived at just over 160 designs, but never the definitive collection.
To Read More
- Bob Petley biography at PostcardHistory.net — An account of Petley’s life, the company’s founding, and its technical innovations.
- Petley Studios catalog at CardCow.com — More than 2,000 catalogued designs, browsable by subject, city, and era; the most comprehensive online reference.
- Petley Studios listing at LastDodo.com — Publisher description and collector catalog with cross-referenced designs:
- Kodachrome history at George Eastman Museum — Background on the film stock that defined Petley’s scenic palette.
