When picture postcards join the 21st century ……

I don’t suppose anyone will be over surprised that this holiday postcard sent on August 25th actually arrived today on October 6th.

Although I must confess I was a tad surprised that we had actually sent one to ourselves, from the Greek island of Kefalonia.

But on closer inspection I realized that “Panorama of Kefalonia” had moved with the times.  

On the reverse was a barcode and that even more technologically 21st century QR code along with the link www.toubis.gr 

All of which would have made my great grandparents take a double take at what you could now access from a humble picture postcard.

That said in their day you could send a postcard after breakfast confident it would arrive later that day, allowing the sender to arrange to meet a friend for tea in the late afternoon.

Not so today when the card might take days to arrive.

But in one-way great grandma’s card and this one remain very similar, and that is simply that the images are not always what they seem.

So, some of the colourful photographs on “Panorama of Kefalonia” were taken decades ago and show landscapes which have changed dramatically.

In the same way those from the early 20th century went through, colorization and retouching to the point where they no longer resembled the original scene.  In one famous case, a picture postcard of Beech Road in Chorlton taken in high summer and been reissued with a Christmas greeting.

And that is it.

Location; Greece

Picture; “Panorama of Kefalonia”, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson