Every picture tells a story, special edition.
Two years after I posted the photo of Heinrich and Maria and their friends posing with a fake polar bear I spotted another old photo with a similar bear posted on flickr by a collector of old photos. Here's a zoomed-in partial view of my earlier photo to remind you:
An exchange with the collector taught me that there are many of these photos, spanning from 1920 to 1970. There is a flickr gallery, and there has been an exhibition in Arles, accompanied by a book, reported in a Guardian article I missed when it came out, which was accompanied by another online gallery of bear photos.
Update 20.6.2024: Here's a new photo gallery of white bear pics taken in Zakopane, Poland.
All very exciting, but as far as I can see no clear answer re. how and why this fad arose. May just have been a business model for buskers?
I guess the polar bear makes marginally more sense in the context of a skiing resort, but there are others taken at beaches, at dance events, and with marching soldiers, so those polar bears do seem to get around a lot.
Quite a few of the flickr pics I liked had disabled sharing, but here's a few that should work - that bear does know how to have a good time:
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