Conference - The Circulation of Postcards in Visual and Literary Culture, 20th–21st Centuries

This symposium, held at the Institut pour la photographie on May 10 and 11 and organized by Magali Nachtergael and Anne Reverseau, brings together artists and researchers from diverse backgrounds to explore the role that an object, at first glance, might have played in the visual and literary culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

The aim is to examine, up to the present day, the various ways in which poets, writers, and artists have viewed, manipulated, and played with the postcard, and how they have embraced or resisted this media format, which is more controversial than it appears.

How is the postcard—as it is reimagined by contemporary artists, particularly in terms of iconographic and collection practices—experiencing a revival that also prompts a critical examination of this mass-produced vernacular medium? By exploring both the postcard’s place in the imagination of the historical avant-garde and its contemporary reinventions, this conference aims to offer a fresh interpretation of this modern medium that emphasizes its communicative implications. Despite fluctuations in production and variations in media formats, the concept of the “postcard” remains relevant and in use even in digital correspondence, attesting to the media model it still represents today.