The Joys of Collecting and the Changing Nature of the Postcard

I am not generally a collector of things. I have never been overwhelmed by the power of the object, I guess, what it boils down to is that I’m just not materialistic. Anyway, this past Saturday, I was meant to meet a friend from New York in London (I haven’t seem him since I was 16), and as I was walking in to the train station he phoned to say there had been some delay, and that it would be best to meet up on Monday.


Well, I was all set to go to London, and suddenly found myself with the entire afternoon on my hands with nothing to do. Of course, like any good New Yorker, I headed into town to get a coffee, and figure out what I was going to do next – wow the joys of free time, a very rare thing in my life!

When I looked around the corner, I saw some signs for an Antique Fair, so I thought that I would give it a go. As I said, I’ve never really been a person that interested in collecting (although, I must admit Martin Parr’s show at BALTIC last year, was incredible – his collection is amazing and spans decades of social history and I found it very inspiring).

With great interest I began to observe the objects, and found myself being drawn in to their narratives. Who’s were they? What was their story? Where did they live? How did they live? These were the thoughts that were racing through my mind; suddenly I came across a pile of old postcards.

I am fond of the postcard in the first place. When I lived in Spain and was at university I would always pick up the free postcards and send them to friends and family. Just little notes to say hello, that type of thing. I suppose this was before everyone had an email address. I didn’t set up one until 1999, so because I was a late bloomer with regards to the Internet, I kept sending people postcards – you know little notes to let them know that I was thinking about them, etc.

So, anyway, this pile of old postcards was fantastic. I found one, which was a birthday card, sent in 1918 (the year WWI ended!). The image is incredibly bizarre, a sort of blue sepia with a boy (slightly androgynous) gazing out to the distance. Now, I know methods of photography have changed, but it’s a peculiar image for a birthday card not the usual cake and candles. Although celebrating birthdays is actually a pretty new thing. Hard to imagine, right?



Anyway, what I found so lovely about this was the message on the back, the date, and the stamp. I feel like I captured a tiny moment in time. Now I was to know more, who was Miss W Shiels? Who was Dorothy? I feel inspired. I feel like I’ve got a new hobby on the horizon. I am so interested in this not only from an artistic point of view, but also social history.

I want to start sending postcards again. The postcard has now been reassigned to the holiday message – “Here we are in Prague, having a lovely time. The weather is nice and the food is great.” I want to take the postcard back, turn it into what it used to be, a form of communication with all sorts of sentimentality attached. It was a way of telling someone that you were thinking about them for no particular reason, I guess what I’m saying is that you don’t have to be on holiday to send someone a postcard.

Eve Arnold to receive Lifetime Achievement Award at Sony World Photography Awards 2010

Continuing with the theme of photography, following our last blog about Martin Parr’s latest exhibition, we are excited to discover that Eve Arnold (b. 1912) is to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards.

Eve Arnold began working as a photographer in 1946. Having started her career at a film processing plant in New York City, she then began studying photography under Alexei Brodovitch, the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, at the New School for Social Research in New York in 1948. Following her studies, she approached Magnum Photos with a series of work she had taken of migrant labourers in Long Island, subsequently becoming one of the first female photographers to be taken on by the agency. Initially working for the agency as a stringer, she became a full member in 1957, working under the tutorage of founders Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa.

(Right) CUBA. Havana. Bar girl in a brothel in the red light district. 1954.© Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

Fascinated by social commentary from the start, one of her earliest photo stories to be published was of black models at a fashion show in Harlem. After becoming involved in the civil rights movement, Malcolm X personally choose her to follow him on his tours. From the early stages of her career, Arnold photographed a range of Hollywood icons, including Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Marlene Deitrich and Isabella Rossellini, and developed close relationships with many of her subjects. She moved to London in 1962 with her son and became a regular contributor to the Sunday Times. Except for a six-year interval when she worked in the US and China, she has lived in the UK ever since.

Arnold travelled the world extensively, photographing in China, Russia, South Africa and Afghanistan. Her time in China led to her first major solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1980, where she showed the resulting images. In the same year, she received the National Book Award for In China and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers.

Arnold continued to photograph well into the 1990s, and in 1995 she was made fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and elected Master Photographer - the world's most prestigious photographic honour - by New York's International Center of Photography. Arnold has had twelve books published, receiving the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award in 1996 for In Retrospect. In 1997 Arnold was granted honorary degrees by the University of St Andrews, Staffordshire University, and the American International University in London; she was also appointed to the advisory committee of the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, UK.

(Left) CHINA. Inner Mongolia. Horse training for the militia. 1979.© Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos

Alongside editing her work and preparing all her archive, Arnold captioned, dated and signed every one of her prints (amounting to thousands) and continued to be an active voting member of Magnum. Following her immensely successful and varied career, Eve Arnold is to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. She will be honoured at the annual awards ceremony in Cannes on 22nd April, the day after her 98th birthday, amongst leading figures of the international photographic community.

Scott Gray, Managing Director of the World Photography Organisation comments:

“Over such an incredible life and long career it is difficult to imagine what Eve Arnold did not capture on film, and what she did capture are some of the most abiding images of our time. We are proud and honoured to celebrate her life and work at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards.”

Zelda Cheatle, curator and close friend of Eve Arnold, added:

“Eve is utterly delighted to be honoured with this award. For someone who began working in a tough world she never lost sights of her femininity and used her intelligence and powers of observation to succeed. I am still full of admiration for someone who shows such determination, perseverance and courage.”

A retrospective of Eve Arnold’s work, drawn from the Tosca Photography Fund Collection and curated by Zelda Cheatle, will be exhibited in Cannes (22 –27 April) as part of the World Photography Festival which will include workshops, portfolio reviews, student programmes and talks from World Photography Academy members and respected figures of the international photographic community.

The accolade, which was awarded last year to the French photographer, Marc Riboud, was created to honour a photographer for a lifetime of widely recognised and critically acclaimed work.

In the latest issue of Aesthetica we introduced you to the New Generation of British Fashion Photographers and constantly strive to inform our readers about the latest exhibitions, works and up-and-coming names in photography. Previous articles focused on the world of photography have included a report on The World Photography Awards 2007 which can be downloaded for free by clicking here and Diana Scheunemann: Naked truth of an ideal world which can also be downloaded for free by clicking here.

For further information on Eve Arnold winning the Sony World Photography Award for Lifetime Achievement visit: Sony World Photography Awards

Working Men's Clubs Through The Eyes of Martin Parr

Following Aesthetica’s feature on Martin Parr’s Parrworld at BALTIC last year, we take a look at his new show Working Men’s Clubs.

Martin Parr’s inimitable style of candid photography returns in the valleys of South Wales as his new show opens next week at the Earlswood Working Men’s Club in Cardiff. Originally being from the South Wales Valleys myself, this exhibition instantly appeals to me. My first thought was that I was glad such an honest, frank photographer was undertaking the task of documenting the spirit of these valley communities. Parr aims to capture for posterity the sense of society and place that is encapsulated in Working Men’s Clubs – a tradition that seems to be dying out in contemporary society. Over the past six months, he has visited many of the Welsh clubs, compiling his anthology of collective identity, social gatherings and civic behaviour. You get the feeling that instead of holding his subjects up in a mocking way, Parr is joining with them and celebrating a sense of community and the coming-together of generations through shared experience;


“It’s the dancing that I really like. Regardless of age, when those familiar numbers are played, up we all get, shaking our bodies and waving our arms, singing along. Our mutual pop history is part of our DNA. Often bands bring their own lighting to dramatise the stage show. With whirling colours and flashing lights, the heady combination of four generations dancing together was, for me, the highlight of this project.”
- Martin Parr

The images depict those in their 40s through to those in their 80s moving in the same spaces, dancing and playing bingo. There is a nostalgic feeling that something is lost in the spaces we socialise in more widely now which are synonymous with anonymity and newness, instead of tradition, routine and the local community.



The venue itself is an important aspect in the bringing together of like-minded individuals from the community, giving them a space for social collaboration. This feeling of the significance of space is emphasised in the way this exhibition is being housed at one of the clubs, allowing the viewer to experience the life and surroundings in a truly apt context. Parr, who wanted to embrace the unconventional gallery space to complement the body of project, chose Earlswood Working Men’s Club as a venue. The presence of the Welsh national flag throughout the series illustrates not only the importance of their Club, but of their city, environment and a wider connection.

The project is a collaboration between Safle in Cardiff and the University of Wales, Newport and is one of four photography commissions from ‘Imaging the City’, conceived by Russell Roberts and Emma Price. The other artists involved in this project include Paul Shambroom, Sarah Pickering and Dan Holdsworth, all aiming to reflect the changing urban landscape and iconography of Cardiff as a city.



"Parr has captured the essence of the Working Men’s Clubs as cultural institutions in delivering the ‘Saturday night out’. Parr, through his series of colour photographs of club life with its large dance floors, affordable beer and live music, has revealed some of the distinctive qualities of the eclectic evenings of entertainment and unabashed enjoyment"
- Emma Price (Co-Curator of the project)

Although these images might depict a Saturday night out a world away from what you usually expect, they encapsulate the importance of a sense of belonging, community and enjoyment that will one day be lost forever. If you let yourself go, you might just enjoy it.

Martin Parr Working Men’s Clubs is at Earlswood Working Men’s Club from Thursday 11 February 2010 – 14 March 2010. For more info please visit www.safle.com

Image Credits: All Images (c) Martin Parr. Used with Kind Permission.