christian stadelmann
The postcard
The postcard – correctly termed: the picture postcard – is an enigmatic medium. Bit by bit, as if moving along a chain, its significance alters with the course of time. At first it is produced to ennoble a landscape. When it is subsequently sold, it is the visiting card of a place – a recommendation for the future.
The purchaser's intention is to demonstrate both a well-chosen holiday destination and good taste in selecting postcard motifs. In writing the postcard, he makes clear to the recipient that he has not forgotten him; in turn when he receives the card, the recipient knows that he enjoys the privilege of participating in the traveller's enjoyment long before all the others who have not been sent a postcard. If it is attached to a fridge with magnets, it keeps the relationship between the two alive, while if it is pinned up next to a desk on a pin board, it characterises this work place as the hard slog that lies between the more pleasant phases of life. In a shoebox, in the midst of piles of others, the postcard can be called up as a portal to memory; and when it fades and the shoebox is relegated to the attic, then one at least does not yet entirely rule out this possibility.
If the postcard ends up at a flea market, it is on the whole cast free from personal associations. Antiquarian value takes the place of its identificatory role. Its significance is now determined by a stamp, a postmark, a printing technique or the rarity of the motif. It is passed from hand to hand, or it remains in someone's hands for a while. And it may possibly return to the place where the image was recorded. There it is now no longer an idealised recommendation for the future, but instead a credible document from the past.
Heidi Dumreicher l Sergio Fant l Marcy Goldberg l Bodo Hell l Christoph Huber l Lilli Lička l Johannes Moser l Michael O'Pray l Hans Schifferle l Burghart Schmidt l Mika Taanila l Jean-Philippe Tessé l Barbara Wurm