My body is on this ship, but my heart is with you, on the land
2014
[ Postcard, photography, artist book ]
A few years ago I have found in my grandmother's sea home a shoebox full of postcards dated from the beginning of 1900 until 1960. A link letters between my great-grandparents and other ¨unknow¨ members of my family.
Firstly, I was impressed by the visual aspect of the postcards and the fragility of the object. The tangible sense of history they emanate. The illustration, the paper, the high quality of the shooting, and the sense of nostalgia given by the yellowed and the scent, intrigued me to start to read the words on the backside of the postcard with the help of an enlarger lens or by the use of high res. scanner.
This takes me to discover an unspoken fragmented story of my family, in which migrations, the experience of refugees, and the horror of war were not anymore just historical knowledge but something embodied in my roots.
For more than seven years I have interviewed people within my family about people related to these postcards. As they prefer to respect their family's silence, none is helping me.
Therefore the only story that I can know is on these postcards.
Postcards are sent from a lot of different places, at a time where travel was not a popular practice. These postcards were mostly not sent from a holiday destination but from migrant's ships across the Atlantic Ocean, Armenia during the escape from the genocide, Paris during the Nazism, and from Venice 1902, when the St. Marco's bell-tower collapsed, among many others.
The postcards we know, pre-smart era, were mostly related to holiday destinations, seas, and mountains or landmarks. The images have a mid-quality and the messages to our addressee were short, repetitive, and shallow.
These postcards are much more different compare to what we used to know. The quality of the images is much higher, the landscapes talk about the history and the facts, the calligraphy is particular, and the written contents are not conventional or replicated, but deep and emotional.
One of the postcards says: ‘We desire to see you again in our Italy, before die... Useless is talk about what is happening in Paris, all the newspaper talk about it and what we thought was impossible, it is now the real...’ (Paris 1938)
similar in another postcard: ‘My body is on this ship, but my heart is with you on the land’’
(Luciano Manara ship, Armenian escape / exudos to Central America)
This postcard has sent by a grandfather's aunt, whose husband migrates from Armenia to Milan, then escapes as a refugee to Caracas, as political persecuted.
Firstly, I was impressed by the visual aspect of the postcards and the fragility of the object. The tangible sense of history they emanate. The illustration, the paper, the high quality of the shooting, and the sense of nostalgia given by the yellowed and the scent, intrigued me to start to read the words on the backside of the postcard with the help of an enlarger lens or by the use of high res. scanner.
This takes me to discover an unspoken fragmented story of my family, in which migrations, the experience of refugees, and the horror of war were not anymore just historical knowledge but something embodied in my roots.
For more than seven years I have interviewed people within my family about people related to these postcards. As they prefer to respect their family's silence, none is helping me.
Therefore the only story that I can know is on these postcards.
Postcards are sent from a lot of different places, at a time where travel was not a popular practice. These postcards were mostly not sent from a holiday destination but from migrant's ships across the Atlantic Ocean, Armenia during the escape from the genocide, Paris during the Nazism, and from Venice 1902, when the St. Marco's bell-tower collapsed, among many others.
The postcards we know, pre-smart era, were mostly related to holiday destinations, seas, and mountains or landmarks. The images have a mid-quality and the messages to our addressee were short, repetitive, and shallow.
These postcards are much more different compare to what we used to know. The quality of the images is much higher, the landscapes talk about the history and the facts, the calligraphy is particular, and the written contents are not conventional or replicated, but deep and emotional.
One of the postcards says: ‘We desire to see you again in our Italy, before die... Useless is talk about what is happening in Paris, all the newspaper talk about it and what we thought was impossible, it is now the real...’ (Paris 1938)
similar in another postcard: ‘My body is on this ship, but my heart is with you on the land’’
(Luciano Manara ship, Armenian escape / exudos to Central America)
This postcard has sent by a grandfather's aunt, whose husband migrates from Armenia to Milan, then escapes as a refugee to Caracas, as political persecuted.
︎Spec - Tech
A4
printed on recycle paper
printed on recycle paper