As archives thaw

"It's a shame not to have more photos around the house. I guess we didn't see the point of taking pictures of ourselves... It's a shame."

I went to the cinema at the Barbican Centre recently to see '45 Years', a new film by director Andrew Haigh.

Before going in, I visited the giftshop and bought a postcard of the Barbican Centre itself. I'm especially interested at the moment in how cultural institutions present themselves, for example which images end up on their own postcards. I'll blog on this at some point.

From 'Barbican Collages' by artist Margaux Soland

The sister film to Haigh's excellent 'Weekend', '45 Years' explores the long marriage of Kate and Geoff Mercer.

Played by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, the couple must react to the discovery of the body of Katya, Geoff's former partner. Katya died trekking on a mountain in Switzerland before Geoff met Kate; her body is found after the glacier into which she fell begins to thaw.

Perhaps a theme of the film, Katya's body is one of several material objects from the past - or at least things for a long time out of view - which push the characters in different directions, at times spinning them deep into crisis. These objects include, as it happens, a scrapbook of old postcards. (Of course! ;))

On the train home, no doubt wrapped up in the research I'm undertaking on how museums process objects, I was struck by the potential for 'archived' material to unsettle us.

This seems especially relevant today, given the extent to which archives of all sorts are being opened up: from the digitisation of cultural artefacts, to the leaks of records and emails that individuals would prefer to keep private (wikileaks, Hillary Clinton's personal email account, Ashley Madison...).

One might hope being forced to confront the past necessitates useful reflection, but I suspect this hope stems from our habit (or at least my habit) of searching for means of progress, or even from hard-to-shift ideas of redemption. In Kate and Geoff's case, the uncertainty of how to process the news from Switzerland creates a terrifying situation: their lives could go any which way.

More of the Barbican postcards can be found on Margaux Soland's beautiful website. 

A lively unicorn

Ah, the dead cat.  The choice spin tactic of 2015.

It is with regret I bring up the general election. For those still in need of counselling, help can be found here.

For anyone lucky enough not to be around the UK this year, the 'dead cat' was a new low in electioneering. When someone is losing an argument, becoming uncomfortable at their opponent's momentum, they now throw into the public debate an event known as a 'dead cat'. The dead cat may be horrible to look at, grotesque even. It may incite anger, or disgust. But that doesn't matter. For the person hurling it into view, it is simply better people talk about the cat than whatever they were discussing previously.*

This week, I came across an alternative to the dead cat...

...the lively unicorn.

A couple of years ago an elderly relative gave us use of his car, an old-but-immaculate Ford Focus. It has sat on our road in Peckham ever since - and for most of this time, it has sat idle. In fact, it has been parked up for so long, it's become less a people-carrying vehicle and more a site for community expression: the liberal parking manoeuvres of neighbours have decorated it with all manner of dents and scratches; the bumper resembles a Dulux colour chart.

Anyway, this week, standing by the stationary car, I watched as a small child crashed his BMX into one of the wheel arches.

He got up off the road straight away, thankfully, and assured me he was fine. (I stress I was primarily concerned with his well-being.) But then, clocking the car had something to do with me, he twigged he might be in trouble. Having picked up his bike, he went over to wish away any dent in the car's side. Unaware there was no way I would be able to identify a new dent, he released his lively unicorn...

"Normally," he told me, "I jump right over the cars."

Jump right over the cars?!! He had me. Any possible annoyance at what had happened had no chance of materialising. He began recounting his street-cycling adventures. Riding his 3-foot high bike, he explained, sometimes standing on the hub of its back wheel, he was able to hop over any car he chose. He pointed at the road's cars as if they had been assembled just for this purpose. It was what he did to pass the time.

I challenge anyone to be angry at a boy claiming to be their town's E.T..

Above (and below) is a postcard of Peckham produced by David Hankin. It shows the different sights around this corner of London. Two things worth noting. First, the sky isn't always blue in SE15. And second, if you squint hard enough at the picture of Peckham's Rye Lane, you can just about make out a young superhero bouncing over car after car after car.

* In the case of the Conservative Party, the cat took the form a relatively minor politician (Michael Fallon). As the Opposition seemed to be making headway on the issue of clamping down on tax evasion, he made some pretty low accusations about the leader of the Labour party - that he was someone willing to stab his own brother in the back, and was therefore not to be trusted. Sure enough, the media focused on the dead cat. Tax evasion was left for another year.

A postcard of a cup of tea... and another of a cat being mended

Day 17 -  Dear Dye, Thanks for the tea...

Every couple of weeks, I have a cup of tea in Dye's Pie and Mash on Munster Road in Fulham. I've been going there for several years. No fuss. There's chat if you want it. Silence if you'd prefer.

Last year, you might remember Raam Thakrar challenged me to send a postcard a day from my mobile phone for 80 days. For one of the cards, I took the photo above of a cup of tea which Dye had served me. I then sent the postcard to Dye, not telling her it was from me.

Immediately after sending it, I felt a bit embarrassed. It was a stretch to imagine Dye and I had established a friendship, one that would be comfortable with the play involved in sending and receiving this daft card.

It took me months to bring up the card with her, to risk rejection of the offer of play. But then I noticed something that suggested Dye had enjoyed receiving the postcard: she'd pinned it to the board behind her counter. A year on, brilliantly, it's still there.

Another cup of tea

As to the other cards, for some I'll never know how they were received.

For sure, I know the location of many: my friends have theirs, my grandfather still has his, my parents theirs. They all really enjoyed the extra post.

And the one I sent to myself of a toppled post box on Regent Street is in front of me, on my desk.

Day 34 - To me

But what happened to those sent as protests - like that to the Mayor of London on the redevelopment of London's South Bank? In an office somewhere? In landfill?

Day 26 - Dear Mayor... Less shopping, more skating

And did my joke on Day 37 (below) go down well with my cat-loving friends? I've still not got round to asking.

Day 37 : Just in case you ever need Mr Rowntree fixing,
I came across this place today...

Finally, what of those I offered to strangers to create and send? 

Did George (banana, below right) ever explain to his mum why he was at Peckham Rye railway station dressed as a banana? (Day 7) I really hope not.

Day 7: Dear Mum...from George

Thanks again to Raam for giving me the postcard credits, and for devising the challenge in the first place.

A year on, the cards have become my diary of sorts from the summer of 2013. Or at least the images have. The majority of the cards, of course, are miles away...

(If you're interested, you can see the rest of the cards here. And in the interests of transparency, Raam gave me 100 credits to use Touchnote's postcard service for free last summer. Views above, however, are my very own. Other postcard apps are available.) 

The Postcard is a Public Work of Art

Following on from January's blog, here's a quick interview I did with curator Jeremy Cooper on his exhibition 'The Postcard is a Public Work of Art', and in particular the work of artist Molly Rooke.

The exhibition runs until 1 March 2014 at Bökship on Cambridge Heath Road in London.

The final Bloomsbury Sunday

Next Sunday (24 November) London's main postcard market will be held in Bloomsbury for the last time.

Due to the rising cost of space in the city centre, the market is having to move to a venue in Clerkenwell.

If you're in London, see if you can make it on Sunday. It's at the Royal National hotel on Bedford Way, from 10.30am. If you do go, you'll discover two extraordinary cultures, both of which offer much for the soul.

First, the fair's a great way to explore the Postcard Age from before World War One, when the British alone sent close to a billion cards a year. Back then, postcards were more than just the stuff of holidays, carrying every sort of message from birthday greetings to poetry.

We might not be in the year 2900 yet, but I think the market already proves right a prediction made by journalist James Douglas in 1909:

“When archaelogists of the thirtieth century begin to excavate the ruins of London they will fasten upon the Picture Postcard as the best guide to the spirit of the Edwardian Era. 

They will collect and collate thousands of these pieces of pasteboard, and they will reconstruct our age from the strange hieroglyphs and pictures that time has spared. For the Picture Postcard is a candid revelation of our pursuits and pastimes, our customs and costumes, our morals and manners."

With hundreds of thousands of postcards in a single room, revelations are everywhere at the market.

Then there's the second culture: today's postcard community. Whenever I go to the fair, as well as buying more cards than I intended to, I invariably learn of incredible social histories from fellow collectors.

Last time,  I spoke at length to dealer Mavis McHugh from Southampton. After hearing my interest in curious postcard messages, Mavis told me about an amazing card she'd sold a few years ago. Sent in 1916, by a soldier billeted in Buxton, the card had 941 words on it. So striking was the minute handwriting, and so gripping the soldier's account of life in the Royal Engineers, Mavis said she couldn't help transcribing it.

Below is a scan of the first part of the message. Mavis needed six pieces of notepaper to copy it out in full.

eBay may well offer up objects of interest but it doesn't provide a chance to share stories like this.

By chance, before the switch to Clerkenwell was announced, I wrote an article for Picture Postcard Monthly on the market's history. It's quite a story. Hope you enjoy it, and that it encourages you to make it on Sunday if you can.

Thanks to Katja Medic for the photos above from a visit to the market earlier in the year. The black-and-white shots below are from the archive of Dave Smith, one of the 'Smith boys' who organise the fair.

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The fourth Sunday of the month

For the last seven or eight years, I’ve been a regular at the Bloomsbury postcard market in London. To get there I take the Tube, typically, as the hotel where the market is held lies round the corner from Russell Square station. Organized for the fourth Sunday of the month, little ever seems to change there.

At the front desk, the entry process is always the same: empty your pockets for the admission fee, hand it over, and receive a programme and a postcard in return. 

Inside, you’re greeted by the sight of 50 or 60 dealers: most of whom are in the same position each month. 

And then there is the smell. 

With thousands and thousands of cards on sale - even if just for a moment - you can’t help being taken over by the intense smell of postcards en masse.

Bloomsbury market in full flow at the Royal National hotel

Bloomsbury market at the Ivanhoe hotel in the late 1970s

Such aspects of the market are shared by everyone who attends. They (and others) act to create a very communal space. Yet - just as postcard collecting allows collectors to find their own specific niches -  there are also hundreds of very personal rituals alongside the common moments of the fair.

On entering I always go on a lap of the room. I scout for a place to settle, for somewhere I might find a stash of cards I’ve not come across before.

For the record

When the Horsemen of the Apocalypse arrive I, like many others, will be anxious at what lies ahead. 

But I'm hoping to take some solace in knowing how little time I've spent filing stuff. 

Ordering postcards: lots of time wasted. Filing important papers: not so much.

(Facing annihilation, I'm also hoping the unironed shirts in my wardrobe will be a source of light relief...)

Other people's filing, on the other hand, I find fascinating. And, very useful.

Take the British Postal Museum & Archive. An astoundingly interesting place. Located at the back of the Royal Mail's HQ in London, it keeps in order the administrative records of the British (sadly, no longer publicly-owned) postal service. 

In the above video, one of the Archive's curators, Emma Harper, explains the significance of some curious postcards she found recently. They're from a largely forgotten period in the history of the postcard  - and demonstrate how change often happens from below. Many thanks to Emma for sparing the time to show me them.

On sorting

A postcard collection is never stable, never entirely complete. 

Ten years ago, artist Mary Anne Francis played with the challenge of ordering her collection of postcards in her work 'Unsorted'. 

Rather than showing an ordered collection, she exhibited her postcards in the process of being classified. 

According to Mary Anne, the installation showed someone “attempting to arrange – sort out – a collection of sorts… but: how to sort a type or type a sort?” 

I’ve come to realise that just as a collection reaches some kind of order, it seems to call out for more of a type and then, inevitably, more of a sort.


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Image of artwork in video courtesy of the artist: installation view of 'Unsorted' at e1 gallery, London, 2002

Artwork sourced from Jeremy Cooper's 'Artists' Postcards', Reaktion Books.

Post-It-ese

A trend for 2011 has been the re-emergence of the post-it. This week, at Apple stores across the world, it was the low-tech post-it note that people used to pay tribute to the hi-tech visionary Steve Jobs. 

Photo credit: Twitter user @lautenbach

In London over the summer, we had the Peckham Peace Wall after the riots. People expressed their frustration, shock and optimism on notes stuck to a boarded-up discount shop.

Photo credit: Flickr user Celie

In Paris, there was even La guerre des Post-Its. Office workers competed over who could make the best art from the sticky notes.

Photo credit: postitwar.com

What is it about the post-it note that makes it popular now? 

Low-tech. Physical. Mobile. Playful. Free from rules of grammar and etiquette. Anonymous.  I guess all of these. 

Post-Its were massively useful for me over the summer as I ordered my thoughts on old postcards for my dissertation. Not just because they were easy to move about but because they made me engage with the form - the short, written message. 

There's more in this... any thoughts?

The Picture Postcard World of Nigel Walmsley

Edwardian postcards make it onto the small screen on Thursday with The Picture Postcard World of Nigel Walmsley.

Jake Hayes and the rest of the BBC4 team did a great job unpacking their history. Messrs Tuck, Hartmann, Gladstone and all the other postcard heroes would be very proud. And I really enjoyed getting the chance to tell the stories of Dorothy and Miss Emerson.

As well as helping out on the documentary, I've been busy finishing my dissertation on the mysteries of old cards. Thanks for everyone's support. Now that it's handed in (phew!) I'll be writing up bits on Postcardese. Really looking forward to hearing what people think.

As I wrote it I realised the importance of this card from Meg to M. That word on the second line, "tonight", has had an impact on how I see all pre-WW1 cards.

Franked in Putney at 10.45am, Meg was so sure of the Edwardian postal service she was able to plan a trip to the theatre that very evening:

"H and I are going to see the "Girl on the Stage" tonight, would you care to join us..."

With one word the card reveals how postcards were not like they are now. As the documentary explains, rather than being a sign of not caring about the timeliness of a message, they could be sent and received within hours.

And because of this, they become such curious objects. On the one hand foreign, signifying a way of life that has disappeared. But on the other, eerily prescient of our instant means of communication today.

Anyway, I really hope you enjoy the programme. It will be on BBC iPlayer for a few weeks if you miss it on Thursday.

And if you are new to Postcardese, sign up for the newsletter by entering your email in the box on the right hand side.

Or follow @postcardese on Twitter. It's like a 21st century version of the postcard ;)

Excuse this scribble

Dorothy's message to Grandma is a great example of how a postcard can capture a single moment. Not content with just telling her grandmother she's in London, she uses the physical act of writing to bring her experience to life. The bumpy scrawl gives the reader the sensation of being on an underground train somewhere beneath Edwardian London.

There are risks for us here though. Just as we've learnt to understand photography's limits in telling us the truth, we must be a bit circumspect about how much one card can ever tell us about the past.

Although perhaps more honestly so than photographs, postcard messages are of course very subjective. While space restrictions encourage people to keep to the facts, the sender will always give us their version of events. We can't be sure but I suspect Dorothy may well have hammed up the jumpiness of the train for her Grandma's enjoyment. The neat address certainly suggests she regained her poise at some point :)

More generally, postcard messages may also encourage us to fall foul of what Susan Sontag called the 'atomizing' of life.

Sontag was wary of photos; seeing them as no more than thin slices of space and time. She felt there was a danger that by relying on photos, people create histories of freestanding moments (or 'particles') rather than remembering life as it is - continuous. I know when I think back to my favourite holidays or childhood, it's often photos which come to mind first rather than memories of the whole experience. The same reservations must apply to postcardese.

But, as Postcardy and Debs explained the other week, if we are wanting the truth it may be best to look to the top right hand corner. Our friend the tilted stamp is back. A clear, undeniable sign that Dorothy loved her grandma.

Postcard jigsaw

Something of a jigsaw puzzle for you this week. I've found a few of the pieces. There must be more though...

Piece #1. Our sender is quite the artist. A map of his journey, presumably.

Piece #2. Something appears to have happened in Hastings. After all, Hastings is not on the London to Liverpool line. A romantic trip away perhaps?

Piece #3. It seems Miss Warden hadn't visited Liverpool before. Would she ever be tempted by une ville "plus charmante"?

Piece #4. With a bit of a squint we can make out our sender worked near the Exchange railway station.

Piece #5. And finally, the French scribbles on the front - is our sender trying to be sophisticated or is French his mother tongue? Je ne sais pas.

Really looking forward to your comments!

PS For a better view of any of the images, click on them and hopefully you'll be able to see bigger versions. Only thinking of your eyes... we don't want you getting like Edith.

PPS If you're interested, you can receive the Postcardese newsletter by entering your email in the Subscribe box on the right.

Coded love

In her comment last week, About Postcards said she enjoyed cracking coded messages. I love doing this too. In fact, one way or another, all of my favourite cards are written in secret languages.


I'm not sure exactly why this is. But I reckon it's got something to do a concept JJ Abrams (creator of Lost) calls "the mystery box".


When you have a moment, have a look at a seminar Abrams gave on storytelling - link is below. He talks about being drawn to things which have "infinite possibilities" and uses the example of a box of magic tricks he is fascinated by because it's never been opened.


I find postcard messages offer a similar means for firing imaginations. They might be a bit pedestrian, especially compared to special-effect-driven adventures on desert islands, but mysteries are there to be enjoyed.


And with coded messages you get double your intrigue.


The code presents the obvious challenge, working out the words the author wanted to hide from the postman. But even when you've deciphered the message you're still only left with one moment, one piece of a dialogue. The before and the after remain hidden.


So, to this week's cards. I've put two up. The card in block capitals is at the Easy end of the code spectrum.


Brace yourself for the message to Miss Gertrud. It is Super Fiendish and I'm afraid I have no answers. The mystery box it seems remains firmly sealed. Any ideas?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8

Coded love

In her comment last week, About Postcards said she enjoyed cracking coded messages. I love doing this too. In fact, one way or another, all of my favourite cards are written in secret languages.


I'm not sure exactly why this is. But I reckon it's got something to do a concept JJ Abrams (creator of 'Lost') calls "the mystery box".


When you have a moment, have a look at a seminar Abrams gave on good storytelling - link is below. He talks about being drawn to things which have "infinite possibilities" and uses the example of a box of magic tricks he is fascinated by because it's never been opened.


For me, postcard messages offer a similar means for firing imaginations. They might be a bit pedestrian, especially compared to special-effect-driven adventures on desert islands, but mysteries are there to be enjoyed.


And with coded messages you get double your intrigue.


The code presents the obvious challenge, working out the words the author wanted to hide from the postman. But even when you've deciphered the message you are still only left with one moment, one piece of a dialogue. The before and the after remain hidden.


So, to this week's cards. I've put two up. The card in block capitals is at the Easy end of the code spectrum. If you're struggling there's a clue at www.twitter.com/postcardese.


Brace yourself for the message to Miss Gertrud. It is Super Fiendish and I'm afraid I have no answers. The mystery box it seems remains firmly sealed. Any ideas?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8

Bravo!

Sunday's card is still coming. But after last night's football, I couldn't resist a bonus post.