Market of Lost Postcards
A stopover in Athens brought just enough time to explore the city's centre. Small shops, engulfed by antiques with enigmatic sellers calling out to explore the trinkets inside, lined the late afternoon's increasingly busying streets.
It was a miracle the shopkeepers knew the contents of their store but even in the chaos all items were meticulously organised. Amongst the collection three unassuming boxes caught my eye. Handwritten postcards, each offering a tiny snapshot of moment that felt important enough to share, were stacked neatly alongside other household items. These unsent or undelivered words were never received by their loved ones and here they were, some almost 100 years later, in a box, in Athens.
I bought 6 of them with the promise of giving these words a second life. I wanted to uncover what words felt so important back then that they had to be written down and sent.
Commonalities between the collection ranged from generalities such as weather updates to personal updates from the lives of the sender. The oldest in the collection, a postcard from France in 1923, interestingly bared similarities to the oldest from Greece in 1989. Both mentioned the beautiful weather on vacation and how the sender longed for their next embrace. Both also pick a specific memory to share. The one in 1923 selecting a memory of working in a factory back home whilst the one in 1989 informed the sender that their trip to Athens had brought back memories of their dear friend Alec.
