Postcards from hell, 2011

Typically you get postcards from warm sunny places with palm trees, coconut drinks and umbrellas. The cards are signs of affection and an easy way for your faraway friends to show off. Very rarely do you get a postcard from the armpits of this world. Too much is brewing there; who has the time or inclination to write? And if they did, how would they fit all they had witnessed and felt on the back of a 3x5 card?

A recent Foreign Policy photo series by Elizabeth Dickerson Postcards from Hell, 2011 takes a stab at this. The combination of striking pictures with short narratives make the series seem postcard-like in an ironic way. Worth a glance, since it is unlikely you are going to find these in a mailbox near you.

School is out for the summer

I missed a card Lynn did last may, so I am posting it now. This 'photo drawing meld' as Lynn called it turned out well. It reminds me of a drawing assignment I received in a high school photography class. We ripped one of the black and white photos we had developed into half and then drew the missing side. Since I had never taken a drawing class (and still haven't!) I remembered not being sure I was up for this. I surprised myself a bit to find that with a little effort I could make the other side of the house I had captured with my camera materialize in pencil form. Makes me want to do this exercise again.

On the underbelly of this card, Lynn wrote about wrapping up the school year for summer. In addition to saying farewell to some retiring teacher friends, she also hosted the school's girls' club End of the Year Party. Apparently, this meant containing 35 girls with a sugar high for a few hours. Wild from all of the pop they drank, they broke out into playing 'America's Got Talent' for an hour. (Somehow reading this, I assume they were drinking red Faygo... I have no idea why.) I have a feeling this made Lynn especially appreciative of the relative silence that came with summer.

A picture of Meripa

After calling the village mayor to check in on my Samoan host family after the tsunami last fall, I learned that not only had my family suffered physical damage to their oceanside fale, but that my host mother and three sisters had died since the last time I had called. Like so many poor people without access to proper healthcare in the developing world they went to the hospital and never returned - despite having treatable diseases like diabetes. I had called Falelatai expecting bad news, but I never expected that its cause would be from poverty rather than from mother nature. I also never could have imagined how it has felt to grieve four family members at one time.

Nocturnal inspiration

When I am not working, I have been walking a lot at dusk and in the evening the past few weeks in Tamale. As night falls on the city, I find myself completely absorbed in the way that colors change. The coals of an iron stove light up a woman's green dress and the the bronze earth below. A red light silhouettes a woman carrying a silver pan on her head. Television light reflects on a crowd of faces gathered around an outdoor TV. They are flashes that I cannot seem to put on a postcard. For this reason, I had to share this link to a piece by the photo journalist, Lynn Saville, in the New York Times. I love these photographs as much as I love the city they capture.

Post-Wedding

Lynn sent me this as her first card about a month after she got married. It was a nice surprise and was accompanied by a thank you note. Although my camera is not great, I like how the picture book opens so that you can see the two of us in the middle. Great memories and beautifully made.