The New (Old) American Postcard

I’ll try to keep this short, as a postcard. My first batch of postcards have arrived!

I don’t see them simply as postcards: to me, they are mini-artworks. If you are old (or hipster) enough, you will recognize the inspiration. Notice the editing, the kitsch lettering, the color palettes, the iconic views from the air and the rounded white bezel surrounding the image: I tried to recreate the feeling of the “golden age” of postcards.

I place such age at the apex of mass tourism, just before the appearance of low-cost flights (when trips became too frequent and too short to allow for postcards). In other words, postcards belong to summer holidays. Most of my childhood spanned over the Nineties. I learnt to write in the fall of 1992. In the summer of 1993, I started scribbling my first postcards.

Before the appearance of smartphones, tablets and the ubiquitous data connection, time was a different experience altogether. Vacations were a peculiar mental space in which boredom was welcome, and we garnished it with games, books, naps, and postcard-writing sessions. We would send postcards to our grandparents, to aunts and uncles, and to a carefully curated handful of schoolmates. Some were just a greeting and kisses, others were short novels packing as much information as a thin handwriting could inscribe in a couple of square inches – paying a sacred attention not to trespass into the holy field of the recipient.

Maybe it’s because, in Southern California, hardly a day goes by without someone saying that “we live in a postcard”. Maybe it’s the forced immobility of the past year, which made us long to travel and recall all of the special experiences surrounding our journeys that we would so easily take for granted. And maybe it’s my drone work, producing several aerial landscapes that kept my mind running back to the dozens of postcards I had sent as a kid.

Anyway, here’s my postcards!

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These postcards are for sale at $2.50 each, or 10 for $20, mix and match (any selection you want, one of each, 10 of one, 5 and 5…). If it’s convenient to you, I am happy to add US (36 cents) and international stamps ($1.20) with no markup.

Just send me an email at photos@tombertolotti.com and I’ll get them ready for you! I have most of these designs in stock. If you’re local, we can meet. Otherwise, shipping is an option.

Please come back to this page periodically, as I will keep uploading new designs as I create and have them printed!

Update July 26, 2021: Two new designs arriving next week! The Point Vicente Lighthouse in Palos Verdes, and a dreamy sunset view of Redondo Beach!

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Kisses from Redondo Beach

XOXOXO

Tom