Postcard

Inside my recently acquired copy of The Russo-Japanese War, a book published in 1904 featuring the extensive use of photographs by Jimmy Hare and other staff photographers from Collier’s magazine, there was a postcard.

The vintage is uncertain, but it is printed on Kodak Azo paper with a manufactured postcard imprint—which places it post 1907 at least. It made me think of Benjamin’s discussion of the aura of daguerreotypes. The situation here is similar: an anonymous sailor stands in a manufactured tableau. It has a certain fog of uncertainty around it, and a manufactured sort of patriotism. I’m sure it was one of thousands produced as souvenirs, and yet it has a certain individuality to it—knowing that this man no doubt meant something special to someone at sometime.