I still send postcards to friends and relatives and those who are young-at-heart and find enjoyment in receiving a missive from some far-off locale. Indeed, I still write letters, but find my correspondents dwindling as the preference for thumbed messages grows. When sending postcards, I have a tendency to choose those that best capture the visited town or city from some previous decade, where the images look like stills from 1950s feature films—overly colored with azure blue skies, hot pink flowers and lime green lawns. Of course, these postcards can often be of the most boring and mundane things—a roundabout, the civic Christmas lights, a multi-story car park, a shopping mall, a newly opened motorway.
Like this little bundle of postcards, which could have been the kind of thing J. G. Ballard might have enjoyed, or at least one of his characters might have sent from a high rise in London, or an airport hotel, or a shopping mall on the M25 to some scar-worn lover. The postcards show what was once considered important, beautiful, or worthy of civic pride: the bus station, the flyover, the interchange, the mall. While the pictures tell one story, it would be interesting to know what was written on the other side—maybe something like “Glad you’re not here?”
Before the London Dockland’s Light Railway.
Bolton, Town Center.
Broxbourne, Civic Hall.
Central Clock Tower, and Tunnel Fly-overs, Birkenhead.
Chapel High Shopping Center, Brentwood.
East Kilbride Shopping Center, Scotland.
More postcards from the edge, after the jump…
