Lifelong vintage postcard collector reveals weird and wonderful findings from across UK

Eliza Ketcher18 November 2019

It would be fair to assume that postcards are a thing of the past. Social media has introduced an immediacy to the way we communicate which makes it easier than ever to stay in touch.

And yet for Tom Jackson, the power of the pen is far from dead. He has been collecting vintage postcards his whole life, and has gathered together the funniest, strangest and most moving messages in his new book Postcard from the Past. For him, postcards never lost their relevance.

“I sent a postcard yesterday,” he tells me. “When I first started this project, I don’t think I realised the extent to which postcard use had diminished. I’ve always sent postcards and I thought other people still did, and I don’t think that’s true actually.”

He’s right. Since its advent 100 years ago, postcard usage has plummeted. “25 years ago, we sent 25 million cards a year,” Jackson says. “Three years ago, that was down to five million.”

It is understandable, since it is quicker, easier and cheaper to “wish you were here” via an instant message than to buy a postcard and stamp, put it through a letterbox and eagerly wait for our loved ones to receive it on the other side. So, why go to the effort?

(Postcard from the Past )
Postcard from the Past

“Getting post is nice,” Jackson puts it simply. “There’s something nice about the physicality of a postcard. You can’t put a social media post on your mantelpiece, and in years to come those social media posts will have disappeared into the ether. Whereas cardboard is quite resilient. Unless you throw it in a bucket of water, set fire to it or rip it up, it’ll still be there in years to come.”

The book includes postcards sent from around the world
Postcard from the Past

Many of the 50,000 vintage postcards Jackson has collected over the years date back to the 1960s and 70s. And while the way we communicate has changed drastically since then, the meaning behind those messages remains the same. “Yes, things were different in the 60s and 70s, and you find details about pop groups and cars that feel different. But actually, the sentiment behind the card is universal and timeless. We haven’t evolved in 40 years, we’re the same people. We still want to have a holiday from time to time, ideally somewhere warm where it’s not raining, with people we love. And those who can’t be with us, we like to stay in touch with them. It’s kind of a universal thing.”

Critics of social media point out that we are incapable of living in the moment; how an obsessive need for likes and follows has removed us from the simple joys of real lived experiences. Having an audience and platform to perform to on social media can in many ways make the process of documenting an experience as important – and real – as the experience itself.

Some postcards also give an insight into people's private lives (Postcard from the Past )
Postcard from the Past

But our desire to communicate and share our experiences with others predates social media, and can be seen through early critiques of postcards in the late 19th century. “There was a big moral panic,” Jackson says. “They thought, because you could buy a pretty picture of a mountain, you would no longer look at a mountain properly, which I think has a clear parallel in some of the criticism of modern social media.”

Perhaps modern forms of messaging aren’t tarnishing our communication with one another, but enhancing it. “All these new kinds of technology, new ways of seeing things, new ways of sending messages to people – they all just add to the mix,” Jackson says.

It might well be that postcards are due for a comeback. Despite having grown up in the digital age, millennials are known as a nostalgic generation. The popular culture of the 2010s has been awash with throwback nights, 90s fashion and Polaroid cameras, as young people aim to assimilate an authenticity associated with previous decades. Could postcards be next on the list? “Vinyl players all but died out, and then they came back. Perhaps they need to die out a little bit more and then come back,” Jackson laughs.

(Postcard from the Past )
Postcard from the Past

From mundane to moving, funny to tragic, Postcard from the Past provides a window into human connections in their rawest form, while holding a mirror up to our continued desire to communicate and connect with one another.

Tom Jackson's book Postcard from the Past is out now.

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