With the new month comes a new postcard. For this month I wandered over to the local park, which had recently renovated the tennis court, now used primarily by four retired women to play pickleball. Let me know if you want a copy.
On any given afternoon the sounds of people shooting basketballs, playing softball, and hitting tennis balls echo through the park. Ah summer.
With the new month comes a new postcard. For this month I tried to produce one photograph each day of something on my table. Some of those photos were better than others. Some more peaceful. Let me know if you want a copy.
A still life can encourage us to pause and relax. Forget for a moment the chaos of everyday life and just sit still, as the name implies.
With the new month comes a new postcard. February was a proper winter month, new snow almost every week. Stark and cold are excellent descriptors for the past month. Let me know if you want a copy.
How long, I wondered, until the noise and chaos of the game disrupt the silence? Not long enough.
With the new month comes a new postcard. This month’s postcard comes from a local state park. Winter seemed to demand black and white. Let me know if you want a copy.
Just days later the freezing temperatures and snow would come. But this morning I enjoyed the mild weather and the lovely falls.
With the new month comes a new postcard. This month’s postcard comes from much closer to home. A maple I pass on my walk to and from work seemed to defy the monochrome of the world. Let me know if you want a copy.
The last moments of red burn brightly in the otherwise monochrome world of early winter. By now even this color has faded to dark browns and fallen to the ground.
With the new month comes a new postcard. This month’s postcard comes from a moment when I paused in the plains of eastern Colorado to appreciate the moment. Let me know if you want a copy.
The sun burst through the clouds for just a moment in defiance of the howling wind and rain, causing the grasses exploded in amber. Moments later, rain and snow returned, daring me to linger.
With the new month comes a new postcard. This month’s postcard comes from a local park where I spent much of my childhood. If you want a copy, let me know.
How many times as kids were we chased off these bowling greens? More often, I am sure, than they were ever used by actual bowlers.
This month’s postcard recalls a warm summer evening and swarms of mosquitos, oh and a comet too.
Postcards are, in many ways, the opposite of snapshots. They are carefully timed, sometimes staged, usually aspirational scenes. I say aspirational because they project a longed-for and idealized experience. They also tend to homogenize our experiences of a place, produced as they are by a tourism industry that seeks to commodify and promote particular destinations. It is their connection to place that can make postcards today seem outdated. In a world that produces, shares, and consumes selfies and other influencer generated images, which are about promoting a personal brand rather than a place or a destination, postcards are quaint artifacts of twentieth-century capitalism. But postcards have, I think, various qualities that make them a valuable medium, some of which they share with snapshots.
Postcards are intentional. They depict a scene that a sender has chosen, often from a spinning, wire-rack tree of postcards outside a souvenir shop. Something about that scene resonated with the sender. Postcards are also intended for somebody, a recipient. They are not broadcast to a following, but sent to a family member, friend, or acquaintance. Postcards thus also reflect the sender’s assumptions about the recipient.
Their specificity is marked also in the messages scrawled on the back. Postcards are written, however hastily, to somebody. They might include a report of what the sender was doing, might include platitudes about the weather, might include well wishes, or might include a seemingly insignificant comment. Regardless, postcards are an opportunity for the sender to say something to the recipient. Postcards, therefore, connect two people.
Like snapshots, the postcard’s physicality is comforting. That comfort begins with finding a postcard in the mailbox, amongst all the institutionally addressed window-envelopes with metered postage in the upper right corner. The roughly 4×6” hand-written postcard complete with postage stamp stands out as a reminder that we are more than an account number, that we are important to another person. We have the physical proof of it in this postcard we now hold.
Again, like snapshots, postcards seem to take on significance with time and distance. Sometimes we contemplate them, reading and rereading the message on the back, before taping the postcard on a wall or mirror or appliance so we can glance at it regularly and think of the person who sent it. Other times, quickly read and tossed into a drawer or box to be discovered later, postcards become important mementos of people and relationships, relics of former lives.
And finally, like snapshots, postcards are mundane. They are not, despite the aspirations of some printers, fine art. The wide, white border found on so many artsy postcards does not elevate their status. It just makes the photograph smaller. They might be a pretty photograph of a picturesque scene, but they are not fine art. They are quotidian, even when they are sent from some exotic place.
These observations seem to hold whether we send postcards to people we know or simply collect them for our future selves. Maybe we should all send more postcards.