Postcard of the Day No. 23, Bordeaux

A weekend walk in the park in early Twentieth Century formal dress. Almost every face is turned away from us. Tiny visual echoes of long vanished lives can be detected. The camera captures the scene with the same compositional neutrality as Manet employed in Music in the Tuileries. A large cast of figures pass the photographer’s plate including schoolgirls accompanied by a governess, bowler-hatted gentlemen, deep in conversation, a pair of soberly attired, tight-waisted females, and right of centre, a nurse pushes a pram and a small and startlingly luminous girl turns her head towards us. She has an almost spectral presence. The footbridge in the background is packed with the to and fro of Sunday strollers. The rigid period dress codes extend to leisure activities. For those fortunate to live a full lifespan, two world wars lie ahead and an old age spent in truly baffling times.

Flatlanders

During the 1950s, Schlitz beer was regularly advertised in America’s great weekly illustrated magazines as an essential accompaniment to a contented family life. These examples from 1953 and 1958 show how the American family gradually lost a sense of three-dimensionality as illustrators discarded conventional modelling techniques in favour of hard-edged clearly defined flat patterned shapes. An element of caricature crept in as physiques were stretched and elongated and eyes began to pop under the pressure of excessive excitement. The new Flatland of the late Fifties looks like a lot more fun when compared with the dull conventionality of life for the couple on the beach. It might be argued that the elimination of three-dimensionality reflected the rising tide of social conformity that typified the Eisenhower years.

Manpower

Postcards are invaluable reference material about the past but, just occasionally, they can supply a glimpse into the future. As fossil fuels become exhausted we can expect to see a lot more of this kind of transport. There are few more potent ways in which one human being can assert their superior economic and social status over another than being conveyed in this fashion. The unfortunate provider of motive power is reduced to the condition of a beast of burden and compelled to compete for work with horses, donkeys and bullocks. Unappealing as it is, perhaps we should be preparing ourselves for this kind of toil. Human dignity is one of the first casualties of economic catastrophe.

The rewards of a close shave

A generous display of scantily clad Barbasol Babes selflessly dedicated to the task of eliminating facial hair from the American male by promoting the sales of Barbasol shaving products. This degree of raunchiness would soon become unacceptable in the 1950s but the moral climate of the immediate post-war years was rather more forgiving. No fear of reproach or censure to divert these femmes fatales from their responsibilities. The keen eye will note the presence of a Barbasolette whose fancy has been tickled by an expertly navigated feather to the extent that her upper body is almost entirely disrobed. The credit for this act of gratuitous graphic undressing must go to a previous owner of this copy of Life magazine whose pencils and erasers have been deployed with limited expertise in this curiously perverse mission to expose. Among the other minor dramas in this compilation are a vigorous demonstration of the art of resuscitation, some gentle gardening and even a little telephone sex. The rewards of a close shave.

Blot on the Landscape

There is a growing cult of the cooling tower exemplified by last summer’s unsuccessful campaign to rescue the Tinsley towers near Sheffield from demolition. Since childhood I have admired these structures with the same awe and wonder as a medieval cathedral can inspire. I perfectly understand that if I belonged to a different generation they would appear as abominations in the landscape but I just can’t see them that way. These specimens at Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire have long been familiar and marked a return to the North Country when travelling back from family visits to the soft South. They stood for industry, energy, practicality and hard labour, all qualities in short supply south of the Trent. Being myself in possession of only modest amounts of these qualities, I soon found myself exported to the South. After almost 5 decades my North Country chauvinism has been considerably diluted in the light of experience and cooling towers are extremely rare in the South West where I live now. I read recently that the top of Lincoln Cathedral is the perfect vantage point from which to observe colonies of these creatures in their natural habitat in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside; distance lending enchantment to the view.

Postcard of the Day No. 22, Williamsburg Bridge

Today’s offering comes from the city of New York and features the Williamsburg Bridge that has carried 2 subway tracks and 8 lanes of traffic across the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn since it opened in 1903. It’s a robust and uncompromising structure that makes no concessions to beauty and its character is faithfully reflected by the acute camera angle employed on this postcard. The transfixing element on this card is the tragedy that is taking place out in the river where a twin funnel pleasure cruiser is ablaze from head to stern. Jets of water from a fire fighting vessel appear to be making little impact and the position of the burning ship suggests that the bridge might be next to go up in flames, compounding the disaster. Curiously, the card bears no reference to this catastrophe as though this was a routine occurrence and undeserving of any special mention. The enlarged detail confirms that the unfolding tragedy is a distinctly clumsy and unconvincing, hand-drawn addition. Vintage postcards often display instances of the art of photo-retouching and even where the level of competence is no more than mediocre it often, as here, adds to the mystery of what we are seeing. The art of incompetent retouching has not been lost in the digital age. To see some wonderful examples of stunning lack of basic skills on the part of overpaid professionals, a visit to Photoshop Disasters is most rewarding.

Postcard of the Day No. 21, Les Roches Noires

A simple, atmospheric composition of delicate colours and textures graced by the ethereal presence of a small girl and her family engaged in the genteel pastime of rock pooling. It all combines into a poetic visualisation of a long forgotten moment of quiet pleasure at the end of a summer day. The details have their own magic. Forms and shapes whose contours fade and dissolve undermine any sense of documentary realism. The pastel hues hover over the forms to which they’ve been applied with varying degrees of accuracy. The image is saturated in an all-pervasive dream like quality that vintage postcards so often and so powerfully deliver. I think a cold shower is called for after all this overcooked prose.