Road Tunnel to Canada

There are two ways to drive from Detroit in the US to Windsor in Canada. The most favoured route is across the Ambassador Bridge (1929) that sails high above the Detroit River that separates the two nations. An alternative route is via the Detroit - Canada Tunnel (1930) - a southbound journey through an immersed tube just short of a mile in length.  Detroit is by far the larger of the two cities and some of these postcards underline the point. One shows the imposing Detroit skyline with a graphic representation of the tunnel approach while another depicts the tunnel in cross section with the humble cluster of low-rise buildings on the left, contrasted with the magnificence of Detroit on the right. Both postcards of the tunnel interior are focused on the mystical point where two countries meet at a subterranean border. Last is a dingy card view of the tunnel entrance on the Canadian side in a depressing setting between two barrack-like hotels. Not much improvement since by the look of the Streetview image.

 

Parisian Sightlines - Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle

This tall and slender Parisian corner building is wedged into the space between rue de Cléry and rue de la Lune at the junction with Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle.  The photo was taken from the corner of rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis on the opposite side of the boulevard.  The lower floors of the corner building are visible in the vintage postcard view below - based on a photo taken from the same location at a slightly different angle.  The streetscape is little altered in over a hundred years although the proliferation of advertising (LU Biscuits being the most prominent) and signage has been much reduced.  The second photo was taken from rue de Cléry and offers a sidelong glimpse of the triumphal Porte de Saint-Denis hemmed in by surrounding building - it’s a great example of the visual pleasures to be found when exploring side streets of modest distinction but possessed of wonderful sightlines. The last two postcards reproduce the scene from the corner of rue de la Lune where the view of Porte Saint-Denis is uninterrupted.  Two decades separates the postcards, the monochrome example being the earlier.  Brioche de la Lune continued to be available from the Patisserie du Soleil but these formerly elegant premises today stand boarded up and empty.

 

Monocle Men

Monocle Men were never short of employment opportunities in the Universe of Brand Characters. Their association with good breeding and their foppish tendencies made them ideal product ambassadors. Rea Irvin’s creation for the New Yorker, Eustace Tilley, epitomised the air of effortless superiority that a monocle confers. The updated Tilley from 2018 was drawn by Malika Favre. Heinz, of soup and ketchup fame, chose a monocled tomato (known as Mr. Aristocrat) to spearhead their advertising campaigns in the 1930s.  Often deployed in multiple, the top hats were conventional class signifiers but the rubicund features sent out a very mixed message suggestive of short temper and irritability - not the qualities looked for in a brand mascot. The breezy monocled bonhomie of the Striding Man in red frock coat and polished black boots has been around since 1909, embodying the virtues of Johnnie Walker whisky to the present day.  Mr. Brandyman does the same job for Martell with a brandy glass for a head - hand drawn in cartoon form, his raffish demeanour is amplified by the cigar or cigarette that’s never far from his lips.  In 1919 Sharps Toffee introduced Sir Kreemy Knut (biography here) who, with bow tie, briefcase and swagger stick, launched his campaign to ruin the nation’s dental health with caramelised sugar.  A final mention for Mr. Peanut whose contribution to monocled marketing has been featured extensively on this blog, most recently here in 2012.

 

Postcard of the Day No. 101 - Aquatic Frolics in the Wannsee

The normal relationships of scale we would expect to see in a spatially coherent composition are not to be found here in this postcard image of the Wannsee in Berlin. It’s more of a collage than an integrated image in which incongruities of size and disposition undermine our ability to fully conceptualise the visual (mis)information. It’s a paradox that German postcard producers famous for exacting high standards of printing should produce clumsy, slapdash assemblages of clip art in such numbers.  That apart, it must be conceded they are not without a certain naive charm.

The Wannsee is a recreational and bathing centre located in the south western suburbs of the Berlin,  popular with city residents. The distinguished artist Max Liebermann built himself a lakeside country home in 1909.  In 1930 the influential silent film People on Sunday was filmed there. Later, in 1942 the Wannsee Villa hosted a gruesome gathering of Nazi bureaucrats, presided over by Heydrich and Eichmann with the aim of finalising arrangements for the Final Solution.

In Malo-les-Bains the photographer has captured a remarkable instant of documentary realism. The eye is drawn to the right where a Burt Lancaster lookalike embraces a pair of athletic bathing belles. In the centre a group of mostly moustachioed males try with varying degrees of success to join in the celebratory mood. On the left is a living caricature of rotundity, his ample contours amplified by the unflattering horizontal stripes that protect his modesty.  A few more examples of immersion or part-immersion follow.  None are from the UK - Brits were reluctant swimmers in this era, preferring to congregate, bare foot but fully dressed, on the tideline, with sullen and disconsolate stares directed at the cold grey sea that surrounds their sceptred isle.

 

Hard Labour under Caribbean Skies

It may be a holiday paradise but not so long ago, tourists were just as likely to choose a postcard image of ceaseless toil to send to the folk back home as an image of palm fringed beaches washed by a deep blue sun-flecked sea.  These are the children and grandchildren of an enslaved population and their hard won freedom has done little to raise living standards.  Key industries - coffee, sugar, tobacco and banana growing remain in the hands of colonial masters for whom an abundance of cheap manual labour sustains generous profit margins.  All of those activities are shown in this selection together with another popular and related subject - carrying the produce to market. Clumsy, patronising captions add to the sense of unease these images arouse.  The prosperous European (mostly British) visitors would be confined to their beach resorts and luxury hotels and no more than glimpse the lives lead by the average citizen of African heritage.  Walk-on parts as servants, waiters or cleaners were the only roles available to them.  

Any fleeting impression that existence was hard and unrewarding could be quickly dispelled by a glance at these images of a contented workforce taking pleasure in the outdoor life.  The rich and well to do have always eased their consciences with the thought that subject peoples are simple folk, only too happy to serve their masters in cheerful acceptance of their diminished social status.  It will never cross their minds that they are seeing the descendants of a displaced people, forcibly abducted from their homelands and trafficked into slavery and indenture with all the attendant trauma of recollected endemic violence, murder and callous exploitation.

From the perspective of the present, there’s always another way to see these images as a picturesque window into a long lost past.  A place we can scarcely recognise now the colonial masters have departed and the donkeys have been replaced by the Hilux and the Land Cruiser.  That might hold true if independent Jamaica had transformed itself into an economic powerhouse but even then to resort to nostalgia would be to overlook the historic dark legacy of disruptive trauma and subsistence economics that has so profoundly shaped the collective national experience.

When we learn, courtesy of David Olusoga’s efforts, that the British government went massively into debt to generously compensate former slave-owners for the loss of their property it’s a reminder that property rights will always outrank human rights in the eyes of the British political establishment.  There was no compensation for forcible abduction, deprivation of liberty and systemic brutality experienced by the victims of slavery.  Left to their own devices, most freed slaves carried on working for their former owners on terms that were scarcely less onerous than the ones they had escaped from.  We must conclude that the pride we are encouraged to take in Britain’s abolition of slavery is much misplaced - despite the ferocity with which it was resisted, it was a very modest step on the road to social justice.  All these years later, Britain has a Prime Minister whose language quite readily slides into casual racism.  Incensed by the BBC’s decision to play instrumental versions of Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory on the last night of the Proms he had this to say, “I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions and about our culture, and we stopped this general bout of self-recrimination and wetness”. In other words - let’s sidestep the uncomfortable legacy of Empire, stand to attention and serenade the wider world with the anachronistic lyrics of the anthems of English Exceptionalism.