This recent article in the nytimes about the exhibition “Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard” at the Met was particularly interesting, not only because I am always fascinated by other people's creative process but I am always looking at vintage postcards myself for work. I look at them primarily to look at how color degrades, how print fades, how paper discolors and stains, where the creases folds and scratches are. It's not in anyway scientific, it's just something I like to do and it informs my work more by osmosis than anything else.
It was interesting to learn that Walker Evans was an avid collector of these 'folk documents'and their aesthetics influenced his work in particular how scenes are cropped. Although a great fan of them myself, I've never collected them - I go religiously to flea markets in Manhattan most weekends sifting through all kinds of ephemera, just looking. If I buy anything its usually books or textiles- except this one time I bought about six postcards, all garden themed with roses as the motif.
The one shown is typical of the general style, very 3 dimensional- either by letterpress (which makes the reverse as you can see quite interesting) or by adding another cut layer. The one shown also has allowed age to soften the vibrant Magenta ink wash and enrichen the paper color to a deeply warm beige. "From your teacher" its says "for good spelling".
+ OccasionalOasis:Nature Tent
+ OGMedia:It's a Jungle in Here
