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Postcards

New York

Gorgeous Vintage Postcards of Brooklyn

By Chloe Pantazi on

It’s easy to forget that before Brooklyn was trendy – its streets lined with yoga studios, vegan bakeries, and shops bearing artisanal offerings – there was another, quite different borough in its place. Brooklyn Visual Heritage, an arts project that has amassed thousands of remarkable images of Brooklyn and made them available online, offers a fresh look at the borough through its past. This Brooklynite was enamored of the collection’s assortment of postcards from the early 20th century. The cards picture attractions such as Prospect Park, Bay Ridge, Greenwood Cemetery, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Brighton Beach, and the correspondence on the other side ranges from simple quotidian messages to well-wishing and Brooklyn love. … Read More

Books

15 Postcards from Famous Authors

By Emily Temple on

Summer may seem like the ideal postcard-writing season, what with cruises and camp, but we’ve always been most inspired to write them in the fall, when the leaves are changing and we’re feeling wistful. So to amp up that wistful feeling a bit — and since as you’ve probably noticed, we just can’t get enough of ogling literary ephemera — we went on the hunt for interesting postcards written by famous authors, from Jack Kerouac to Franz Kafka to Rainer Maria Rilke. Click through and admire the penmanship, doodles, and forceful words of a few of your favorite… Read More

Design

Gorgeous Vintage-Style Postcards Created from Google Maps

By Judy Berman on

The images you’ll find at Postcards from Above look like someone’s treasure trove of postcards from a bygone era — faded, stamped, with worn borders or rounded edges. Many have a retro-futuristic feel, featuring airports and highways and fortress-like industrial complexes. In fact, they’re entirely the products of 21st-century technology. The Tumblr is the work of BBDO NY art director Akos Papp, who sources his aerial photos from Google Maps and edits them to create the impression of a vintage postcard. Click through for a gallery of excellent Postcards from Above, which we discovered via Visual News, and keep track of the project by following it on Tumblr. … Read More

Photography

Vintage Postcards vs. Real Life Locations Around the World

By Marina Galperina on

Filmmaker Julien Donada travels a lot. He’s also a postcard aficionado. In this union, a nifty Internet entity is born. Behold as he re-photographs popular spots from Sofia in Bulgaria to New York City, as seen in the postcards that he finds at flea markets and old bookshops around the world. Can you imagine how it feels to match up that corner then to that same corner now, hill to hill, street to street, lake to lake? Ah! Spot on. The best part is when said postcard is vintage and the differences across decades — a more crowded beach, a half-complete Eiffel Tower, the sepia-toned ghosts of electric trams. Well, it’s kind of neat, to say the very least. Spotted by The Morning News, here are a few of those magical moments. … Read More