Postcards offer an expansive “social archive” of individuals and their interactions over time and space, serving as reflexive ethnographic field notes for researchers in areas such as conflict zones.

Disasters have long been featured on postcards as a global media vehicle to provide audiences with virtual experiences of catastrophes.

Travelogues

Alex was raised with an avid interest for travel and adventure by her multi-cultural parents from various regions around the globe, instilled this love through family vacations at an early age and later on through numerous international adventures as well as domestic trips across America. This passion continued to flourish as she traveled around more and more.

She keeps a scrapbook to record her travel experiences through photographs, maps and written notes. These mementoes allow her to relive some of the incredible moments and sights from her journey – something which allows her to preserve those memories long after it has come to an end.

A corkboard world map covered with colorful pushpins tied to an array of travel photographs is sure to stir an adventurous spirit! These visual mementos suggest all the adventures waiting to be experienced and inspire wonder.

From Budapest’s idyllic landscapes to New York City’s architectural gems, old travel postcards depict an array of historic cities in their diverse guises. Each postcard serves as a time capsule that captures past, present and future memories of these iconic destinations while taking us on an immersive journey that chronicles their history over decades of wars and reconstruction.

Photojournalism

Photojournalism is a form of photography which seeks to document events or moments occurring right now, such as political protests or natural disasters. Photojournalists seek to capture photos that can tell a compelling narrative and grab their audience’s attention; photojournalism provides an important means of showing people worldwide what’s going on right now in our world.

Photojournalists employ specific techniques when taking pictures. Additionally, they abide by certain rules to ensure accuracy in their shots while also striving to capture attention with different colors and angles.

Digital technology has greatly altered the landscape of photojournalism. Many more people now consider themselves photographers due to the convenience of taking photographs on mobile phones; thus compromising true photojournalism’s existence; yet photographers must remain up-to-date on latest photography trends as well as global news events.

At the turn of the 20th Century, postcards were an integral form of communication for people worldwide. At this time, devastating disasters hit various parts of the globe with some receiving little coverage while others such as 1906 Chilean Valparaiso earthquake were widely depicted on postcards – this study investigates why some disasters became popular while others did not and looks into social, economic and political factors that may explain such differences.

Social Documentation

Postcards were an innovative medium that enabled people to unite photographic images with written text on one material object for transmission over time and space, opening photographic images for reuse within cultures of circulation. Postcards complicated divisions between producer and consumer; established local and global networks; connected dispersed families, friends and industries; and provided opportunities for vicarious experiences of disasters like massive earthquakes (see Gennifer Weisenfeld’s description for instance) via reproductions from their aftermath (see fig 1).

Postcards serve a useful social documentation function by sharing personal secrets through them, from mundane matters like lists to deeply intimate ones like these anonymous postcards from Frank Warren’s PostSecret project where strangers reveal secrets they would normally keep private (Figs. 4-5).

Postcards as social documentation tools are an invaluable pedagogical resource that provide students with an innovative, multimodal, collaborative way of thinking about and practising ethnographic fieldwork. Postcards help students write structured ethnographic fieldnotes with images as well as written descriptions of what they witness or experience during fieldwork.

Photography

Photographic postcards can be considered a “social archive” (Volks 2010), through which photographic images are reworked within cultures of circulation. Their immense popularity at the turn of the twentieth century and global circulation facilitated complex divisions between producer and consumer; created local networks; connected dispersed friends and families; altered how photographs were read, as well as shifting perceptions about them altogether.

Due to their transient nature, postcard history remains incomplete. Over time, aspects of this medium are likely missing from historical accounts and how people viewed postcards differs greatly from how we do now; similarly, scholars’ historical analyses differ significantly from our present understanding of them.

While some studies have analyzed postcards through visual and geographical themes, others have focused on specific manufacturers. Real photo postcards typically focus on the work of Curt Teich’s studio in New York City or on portraits produced by London printer Raphael Tuck & Sons. Though these broad sweeps of postcard production are valuable and important, Sheridan Libraries and JHU Museum’s postcard collections include many cards produced outside these contexts and by individual photographers and studios. These cards were often purchased without messages for inclusion in albums or display purposes rather than mailing. As such, they provide a more global perspective than studies that limit themselves solely to European-run studios with Indian apprentices.