Interpreter of postcards

Dr Annebella Pollen... and some postcards

“The small talk of postcards may be likened to the sighs and gasps of pillow talk…”

A couple of years back, I came across a journal article about Brighton Museum's postcard collection. Dr. Annebella Pollen, Lecturer in History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton, had used the museum’s 10,000 cards to establish whether people in Edwardian Brighton used the open form of the postcard to conduct their love lives.

Or, as Annebella put it when we met, she was asked by the museum to locate some "sauce”.

Part of the museum’s 'Rules of Attraction' project, Annebella was one of six “Researcher-Interpreters” tasked with finding stories of courtship hidden in objects at the museum.

As a photography expert, she was initially drawn to the holdings of old photos: snapshots taken of Brighton since the mid-nineteenth century.

On discovering the postcards, Annebella changed her mind. Among the index files and shoeboxes of cards in the museum’s stores, she found all the “sauce” she could have wished for...

"Thinking of you at Brighton" - one of the Brighton Museum's postcards

"[Beatie] breathlessly refers to meetings with several different men in Brighton, including photographer Fred – “the sweet creature” – whom she confesses that she has not seen recently “as, you see, I have other fishes to fry”...”

 “Am sending you [a] photo of the boy I told you about," wrote Lou to Old Ede on the back of a photographic card showing a group of men of whom one is marked with a cross. "What do you think of him?” she asks.

On another the message reads,“isha amena is ertba an eha isha wfullya icena” [Annebella suggests his name was "bert", and he was "awfully nice"]

Annebella recognises it's easy to read innuendo into the most innocent of messages. But such was the volume of obviously romantic messages, she was able to show the postcard was a medium through which many people in Edwardian Brighton conducted their love lives.

When we met I was keen to understand more about the moment Annebella chose the postcards over the photographs: how she came to see the potential of the cards.

The postcards had been stored as reproductions of images, rather than pieces of correspondence. They were “individually wrapped in plastic bags with only one transparent side, evidencing the message side to be the historically inferior face.”

Annebella told me how she's always been interested in the act of writing. Up until her mid-twenties she kept a daily diary, and this has made her on the look out for different writing cultures.

More importantly, she revealed something else that changed the way I now think about her research: Annebella is a collector of postcards herself.

For years she has “hoarded” examples of Flamenco-style cards associated with Spanish tourist resorts. Typically, they come decorated with folds of colourful, spirited material; dancers’ dresses swish out from the cards' fronts.

Some cards from Annebella's collection

Her collection has reached such proportions that she even exhibited it as part of a show by Brighton collectors in July 2011. (Yes, brilliantly, that is her in the photo above, having seemingly stepped out from one of her cards.)

With this, her role as “Researcher-Interpreter” somehow shifts. On my first reading of her paper, I only clocked the “Researcher” half of the tag given to her by the museum. After meeting her, it seems just as crucial to her research were her instincts as “Interpreter”.

Not for the analysis of the cards. This is as patient and thorough as you would expect a piece of academic research to be. Rather, it seems her experience of collecting allowed her to make the most of access to the museum’s collections.

She was alert to where the treasure might lie.

As Walter Benjamin noted, collectors are at their core “interpreters of fate”. They are people who over time develop skills to speculate about objects’ pasts, to appreciate their worth. And in concluding her paper Annebella couldn't resist showing her appreciation for postcards:

“[They] may be small, cheap, and abundant but as inscribed carriers of emotional meaning [postcards] have the potential to become powerful and tangible material to be treasured, pressed to the lips, or placed under a pillow.”


For more on Annebella’s work, visit her profile on the University of Brighton's website.

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.

Enjoying the Gap

Photo by Richard McKeever

I don't just mind the gap, I love the gap between advertising campaigns on the Tube.

On a platform that's about to be refitted, that's been cleared of last month's hashtags, I really enjoy those moments of unsolicited, visual calm.

There may be just 3 or 4 minutes before the next train arrives. Before its urgent insurance offers. Its dating sites. Its charity appeals.

Yet in the meantime there is respite, respite from London's photographic excess.

Last year, Grayson Perry suggested digital photography has meant photos are now "pouring into the world like sewage." I agree. And since they are underground, it doesn't feel much of a stretch to imagine how Tube lines, so typically clogged up with adverts, are already part of some kind of photo-sewer system.

By contrast, standing on a photo-free platform (admittedly outside of rush hour), you get a glimpse of a possible alternative. With the extra good fortune of poor-to-no WiFi, there's a sense of the peace available to cities brave enough to limit photographic pollution.

Eleanor Vonne Brown, of X Marks the Bökship, recently sent me some images of the postcards to go on show at Jeremy Cooper's upcoming exhibition of postcard art.

Unlike the images thrown at us on our transport systems, these were a delight to receive.

My favourite was this postcard by Molly Rooke, titled 'Realistic Expectation', and it was this card that prompted thoughts of ad-free Tube platforms.

Molly Rooke, Realistic Expectation, 2013

The target of the card's joke seems to be us all: how spoilt we are, able to click and click until we have the perfect shot. This easy supply of images must be one of the main causes of the excess of photography we now have to endure, and of the related appreciation for places where we can escape.

The card also reminded me of this postcard from my collection. Posted in 1906, the card's front speaks directly to Rooke's artwork: the 'error' being a slight blurring of the girl's left hand.

The message explains more, and is reflective of a time of perhaps enviable photographic scarcity:

"Dear R

You asked me to send you an Erith postcard will this one do. Baby moved a book which she held but we thought that her face was pretty fair With love hoping you are well From L& J."

More of the postcards from the show - The Postcard is a Public Work of Art - are below. The exhibition includes work by 60 artists based in Britain, and is curated and catalogued by Jeremy Cooper, author of the excellent Artists' Postcards. Thanks again to Eleanor for the images.

The exhibition opens on 23 January at  X Marks the Bökship, 210 Cambridge Heath Road, London. For more details, here's a link to the show's website.

Jonathan Monk, Cooling Towers, 2013

Peter Kennard and Cat Phillips, Study of Head XI, 2013

Daniel Eatock, Affix Stamp Here, 2013

Ruth Claxton, Postcard (St Cecilia), 2013

Simon Cutts, A Postcard Performance, 2013

Hansjörg Mayer, X for Dieter, 2013

Compliments of the season

One phrase, two very different Christmas postcards.

The first was sent in 1915 from Netley hospital, a military hospital near Southampton used extensively during World War One.



The second is from a parlour somewhere near Willesden two years earlier.




Derrida's 'The Post Card'

Of late, I've been reading Jacques Derrida's 'The Post Card'. The work documents the philosopher's thoughts on the essence of a postcard, and is perhaps relevant to the two cards above: how they both use the same phrase but in such different circumstances.

It's a slippery text, written as a satire of literary works involving letters. In it, Derrida comes across some postcards in the gift shop of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. He explains how he's captivated by them, and then uses the sending of the cards to mock the limitations of language. He pokes fun at the idea of ever being able to understand what someone means through words, obsessing with double meanings and how what words refer to can shift over time and between contexts.

If you're in the mood, it's a mesmerizing piece of writing. If you're not, it's like pulling teeth: a friend once told me you only ever grasp one sentence a page with Derrida, and that's if you actually are Jacques Derrida.

But regardless of how much you feel you're grasping, there's something brilliant about where you end up by reading his work. Its deliberate obscurity and deferral of meaning present a welcome challenge to blind certainty, to unqualified rhetoric, to unchecked power.

And why did Derrida choose the postcard as his vehicle? Well...

“What I prefer, about post cards," he writes, "is that one does not know what is in front or what is in back, here or there, near or far... Nor what is the most important, the picture or the text, the message or the caption, or the address. Here, in my post card apocalypse... reversibility unleashes itself, goes mad”

Four years of my blogging, Derrida sums up in a few lines. Anyway...

Thanks for everyone's comments, postcards and emails over 2013. They're really appreciated. And wherever you are, I hope you have a peaceful and happy time over the holiday period.

All the best,

Guy


PS I've noted the possibility of Vine videos sending you mad before so be careful not to look at the two above for too long.

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.

A bright and beautiful thing

Thank you to artist-wonder-friend Kate Wiggs for this postcard. Received, in an envelope, last week.

More on Mathilde ter Heijne's 'Woman To Go' can be found here.

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.