Old postcards have this habit of pulling you in sideways. Not with a clear message. Not with nostalgia on a spoon. More like a quiet tug. You don’t notice it at first. Then you’re already there, staring.
I always thought postcards were about places. Cities. Landscapes. Famous views. Turns out, they’re more about pauses. About how someone once stopped, chose a card, wrote a few words, and sent a piece of their moment forward. No edits. No second draft.
Nature scenes from the Soviet period feel especially heavy in that sense. Forests that look endless. Lakes without reflections adjusted for beauty. Skies that don’t try to be dramatic. Just space. Calm, almost stubborn calm. You look at it and think: this wasn’t made to impress anyone. It existed anyway.
City postcards work differently. Old architecture, wide streets, strange proportions. Some places feel empty, even when you know they weren’t. No rush. No urgency. The city as a structure, not a service. And that silence says more than a thousand captions.
Children’s postcards can hit unexpectedly. The drawings are simple, sometimes clumsy. Big coats. Serious faces. Winter everywhere. They’re warm and strict at the same time. Not cute, not ironic. Just sincere. And that sincerity can feel sharp, almost uncomfortable. In a good way.
What makes all this work today is quality. Real scans. Paper texture visible. Ink slightly uneven. Corners worn. Those tiny flaws matter. They remind you that this object had a life before it became an image on a screen.
If you like wandering through visual history without being told what to feel, take a look at Old postcards. The collection covers nature, cities, childhood themes, and it keeps growing. Slowly. Naturally.
I don’t open old postcards looking for facts. I open them to drift. To get lost for a minute. Sometimes longer. And when I close the page, something stays with me. Hard to name. No need to.
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