The scenery is here, wish you were beautiful

I'm a big fan of Martin Parr and I was lucky enough to get a boxed copy of his retrospective postcards last year. Parr is an avid collector of postcards himself and has published several collections of them which have been reissued in paperback recently: Boring Postcards USA, Boring Postcards and the new Bliss : Postcards of Couples and Families collected by Martin Parr.

I have a small collection of postcards I've found over the years and wonder what people will make of them in 50 years. The postcard is one of the most underappreciated art forms, especially nowadays with email and 'e-cards' making people who take pen to paper and lick a postage stamp a rare breed. Postcards of hotels and motels and restaurants and diners are fascinating in their composition, their optimism and the message they attempt to convey to the present as well as to the future. And they are fun to collect as well as being an easily concealed addiction that doesn't require frequent dusting. American Postcard Art has quite a nice assortment of postcards to browse if not all that unusual or ecclectic. I've also been an active participant in the postcards for mom project since I think it's a pretty fun idea to have people from all around the world send your mother postcards with recipes and comics and whatnot on them. I'd love to see the collection put up online after they decide to end the project.

A fabulous book recently published by Nemo, Terveisiä Kaikille! Postikortteja Suomesta, is filled with wacky and weird technicolour postcards from all around Finland from the 1960s through the late 1990s. [I will note here that the book is only 12euro down at the main post office shop while they last.] I'm hopeful that there might be a forthcoming volume of older cards as well. There are no drive through trees, no carhenge, no jackalope or world's most giant pecan postcards but that can always be fixed. There are, however, plenty of reindeer as you head north. Finland would be a perfect place for the world's largest reindeer or most gigantic bit of salmiakki. What about a Rye Palace fashioned after the legendary Corn Palace?! :) Build it and the postcards will come. I've been putting off a visit to the Korttien Talo [house of cards/postcard museum] up in Hämeenlinna, a city about 50 miles north of Helsinki, until the weather warms up a wee bit more and the castle and other attractions have longer opening hours.

27 Mar 2004 at 15:56, Helsinki