Postcard of the Day No. 100 - Orange Street, Kingston, Jamaica

British rule in Jamaica had more than half a century to go when in 1905, man of few words, Herbert, scrawled his brief message on the front of the card and posted it to J O’Shea at the Great Eastern Omnibus Company in Leyton, Essex. The electric tram service we see here between King Street and Orange Street had been running since 1899 and was praised by visitors for its efficiency. A Canadian controlled company (West India Electric Co.) operated the service using tramcars similar to those used in Montreal. 1905 was also the year that Marcus Garvey arrived in Kingston and found employment as a printer. Less than two years later, in January 1907 the city would be largely destroyed in an enormous earthquake in which over a thousand people died. Sound system pioneer, Prince Buster (1938-2016) was born in Orange Street and recorded his own instrumental tribute, Freezing Up Orange Street and a vocal version, Shaking Up Orange Street. In the 1960s Orange Street was the centre for Ska and Rocksteady recording where rival producers and studios battled for supremacy.

Postcard of the Day No. 94 – Tunbridge Wells Pantiles

Royal Tunbridge Wells to be absolutely correct. It’s one of those place names that’s synonymous with bourgeois respectability. A bastion of propriety in a world of depravity. Spiritual home of the Daily Telegraph reader and, when these postcards were on sale, a popular spa resort with an Opera House. At the centre of town is this Georgian colonnade and pedestrianised shopping street, named the Pantiles. Much photographed, often from the very same spot, it offered fashionable shops, galleries and restaurants, and an elegant space for gentle perambulation. It survives more or less intact, without much evidence of its former gentility, and can be visited on Streetview thus avoiding the need to travel to Kent. The five cards that share a single viewpoint also share a cast of characters – woman with small child/pram, a young man hungry for attention and various canine companions. The night scene is deeply unconvincing – a clumsy exercise in over-painting in which every window glows with an identical lurid shade. Only a local could confirm whether the residents of Tunbridge Wells continue to conduct themselves with such ostentatious dignity as they do in these scenes.

Les Rois du Pavé

This book offers a dazzling excursion through the streets of Paris in the years leading up to the Great War when the streets and pavements were the workplace for thousands of traders, performers, labourers and confidence tricksters. For some the challenge was to buy low and sell high with the greatest profits going to those with the greatest flair for theatrics. Almost any daily necessity - bread, fruit and veg could be bought on the street, along with carpets, ice cream, barometers and chestnuts. Others had only their bodies to sell, from sex workers to sandwich-board men. Some were prepared to be transformed into mobile advertisements – see the man promoting the merits of Bière Celtique with an outsize bottle attached to his hat and the brand name printed on his trousers. Selling services was another popular strategy and offered employment to knife-grinders, street photographers, basket menders, tooth pullers and public letter-writers without the expense of an office, studio, workshop or surgery. There were many for whom the pavement was a performance space for demonstrations of physical skills and endurance or a place of entertainment with musicians, conjurors, bird-charmers, mime artists and puppet theatres.

This activity was only possible because of the efforts of road menders and pavers whose back-breaking toil kept the streets in good order. No less essential was the contribution of the street sweepers, the sewer workers and the forces of law and order. Bus, tram and taxi drivers kept a constant flow of potential customers along the boulevards. Another group had nothing to sell but their labour and they formed a small army of refuse collectors, porters, water carriers and lamplighters. Lowest of all in status were les mégottiers who gathered up the discarded cigar and cigarette ends as part of an exercise in extended use. These were citizens of the lower orders who supported themselves by wit and ingenuity, driven outdoors by necessity to persuade the passing public to pay for their products or services. This book finally honours a marginalised community of the economically disadvantaged that brought colour and vitality to the streets of the city.

It’s no surprise to see more than a few of these photos were taken by Eugène Atget but the net had to be cast wider and the Agence Roger-Viollet was a productive source. The great majority of images are from the author’s (Jean-Louis Celati) personal collection and may well be scanned from vintage postcards. None the worse for that, all the images are remarkable for their definition and clarity. The human subjects confront us in all their complexity, sometimes diffident, sometimes defiant but most often simply absorbed in their tasks. There are smiles of triumph, smiles of contentment and there are stony faces that give nothing away. And it’s not entirely a lost world – many of these activities persist into the present despite the best efforts of capital to privatise public space and designate them as a public nuisance. To see further examples, see the 2010 blogpost, Emperors of the Highways.

Postcard of the Day No. 93 – Panorama du Carrefour du Châtelet

Gridlock by the banks of the Seine, conflicting traffic flows observed from above. Horse drawn vehicles and open-top limousines compete for road space while Parisians circulate at will, oblivious to the confusion. Seen from on high, interlocked vehicles form a pleasing abstract composition but there’s little of the extreme visual drama that Soviet photographer, Rodchenko obtained from his vertiginous photos of Moscow trams. Meanwhile in Chicago, below, we have another spectacular vision of traffic mayhem – overloaded trucks and columns of streetcars jostle for position. Mounted police officers observe but don’t intervene – pedestrians cluster on the street corners, few are brave enough to take their chances in the traffic.

Postcard of the Night No. 13 – Buffalo, Main Street at Night

We stay in the city of Buffalo for a nocturnal visit. Main Street at Night owes as much to the imagination of the artist as it does to the original photographer. Huddled pedestrians scuttle through the traffic as an incandescent streetcar advances through the gloom. An illuminated clock promoting watches beams its message from on high. More modest signs project over the pavement, including a perennial favourite – the sign that advertises “Signs”. In the other cards, the Electric Building lives up to its name with every window ablaze with light while a high-intensity searchlight radiates into the clouds. Finally the Statler Hotel appears in real danger of toppling over into Swan Street - the unremarkable surroundings de-glamourize the image.

Even More Faultfinding

Another batch of Find the Fault has come my way. This transport related set reflects Britain in the mid-1950s but could have been offered for sale many years later in line with the Dennis Productions business model – why innovate when you can profitably recycle? The drawings are conservatively styled – no flamboyant gestures, neutral in tone, soberly conceived. Something of Ant and Bee (Angela Banner, illustrated by Bryan Ward) about them but lacking the eerie precision that gives the former such a haunting presence. Road transport features on most of this series and makes up this selection. The streets and roads are orderly and soporific. Stiff and robotic figures are posed at intervals, with eyes downcast and devoid of social interaction. Vehicles and signage appear anachronistic and there lurks a suspicion that dark events may be playing out just off-stage. The imagination is encouraged to fill the spaces that mediocre illustration leaves blank. The listed faults are often pedantic in the extreme but the idea of a double decker bus lacking a staircase is admittedly unsettling. Pedantry is infectious and unrecorded faults can soon be found – such as the presence of a smoke-emitting pipe smoker on the lower deck of a bus in No. 37.

Postcard of the Day No. 84 - Uchikoshi-bashi Bridge, Yokohama

The foreground figure could be the elderly Matisse although his presence in Kanagawa Prefecture can’t be easily explained. Utilitarian streetcars ghost by in the roadway. Up above, an observer looks down from the iron bridge in the early Spring sunshine. Only 5 minutes walk away is the famous Street of Many Temples. The bridge was built in 1928 when the road connecting Yamate and Tokyo was extended through the cutting – all evidence of a rapidly westernising infrastructure. Judging by this Panoramio photo from 2014 the scene is little changed, though the trams stopped running in 1972. A few more vintage postcards of trams in Japan below – two each from Yokohama and Tokyo and one from Nagoya.