There must be more than a thousand postcards of Cordouan, and from every era, although many are quite similar. The leading collectors of antique postcards (prior to 1939) have more than three hundred different views of Cordouan, some dating from the 1890s. By and large, the photographers chose to capture the outside of the monument, taken from the peyrat or the rocks. Some of the most interesting ones – and the rarest – show the changing of the guard from the buoy tender, architectural details and the interior of the tower. Views of the lighthouse’s ground floor, first floor and the bust of Louis de Foix are particularly sought after. There don’t appear to be postcards of the altar or the lens. Postcards are commercial objects sent to often-distant recipients, but they can also become something fanciful and impressionistic, when the publisher adds a raging sea, lowering clouds or sea gulls circling over the waters around the lighthouse. In the 1920s, the lighthouse keepers sometimes added the oval stamp of the lighthouse to the card, indicating the date of the visit, which increased the value of the object. Cordouan is often associated with Royan, the only port from which, at one time, one could visit the monument. The lighthouse also appears among Soulac-sur-Mer postcards, where it is visible from the coastline. However, Le Verdon and la Pointe de Grave were not views taken up by postcard publishers. Before the First World War, a printer from Bordeaux even issued a dark brown aerial view of Cordouan. This type of view is considered quite rare. In the 1950s and 1960s, the "semi-modern"postcard abandoned interior images of the lighthouse and focused on colour-tinted views taken from the air. Special effects were added to certain images, such as beams of lights emanating from the lens. Each summer for the last twenty years, collectors have noted a dozen new lighthouse images. There are also a number of large-scale artistic postcards.
