Amazon - Free 'The Big Book of Vintage Movie Posters: Volume One: A Kindle Coffee Table Book' Kindle Edition

'The Big Book of Vintage Movie Posters: Volume One: A Kindle Coffee Table Book' Kindle Edition for free.

(This is the first volume of a three-volume set of vintage hand-painted movie posters. The entire set consists of over 600 high-resolution images that have been digitally-enhanced in order to give them maximum impact. Most posters represent movies from the first three decades of the 20th century.)

These days most movie posters use photographs of scenes or characters from the movie but before the 1990s most movie posters employed hand-painted art to depict the scenes or characters. And they didn't skimp on the budget for the art department, hiring well-known artists to paint their posters, which had become an integral part of movie studio advertising. Unfortunately for the artists, they were rarely given credit for their work, with their signatures almost never appearing on the poster.

Posters have been used almost from the very beginning of film exhibitions, with the first poster being made for L'Arroseur Arrose, an 1895 movie by the Lumiere brothers in France. Today, movie posters are traditionally displayed inside or outside of the theater where the movie is playing, as well as in various media for advertising purposes, although these days many theaters use video displays instead of paper posters.