Haunt me, Haunt me, 2022

The first recorded case of a postcard being mailed was in 1840 to Fulham, London. The postcard was addressed to Theodore Hook, a writer and practical joker. It is believed that Hook sent the postcard to himself as part of a joke aimed at postal workers. What came after is one of the most culturally significant forms of communication in human history. Postcards dominated communications in the early part of the 20th century, and continued to surge in popularity until the late 1990’s, at which point modern communication methods such as email were beginning to take over. Despite this, to this day, it is estimated that there are 20 billion postcards mailed across the world each year. The mechanical reproduction of postcards made them a prime candidate for propaganda campaigns throughout the 20th century. In Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Benjamin says “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership.” Through our ability to externalise memory through writing and images; we create objects to remind us of the past. We rely on these objects as a if they are the physical artefacts of memory itself, which is reinforced through the image on the front of the card, and the paragraphs of personal text on the opposite side. Through the act of looking at and reproducing these personal artefacts, I and the viewer are gazing through the peephole, as voyeurs of the private and intimate moments between people we will never know. Similar to the way the old photographs glimmer with nostalgia, postcards are signifiers of memories, both public and personal, that reinforce the history of a time and place. They are memory.