It wasn’t easy selecting the most boring example from this eye-numbing collection of 160 postcards from the 50s and 60s. We finally settled on this specimen:
Traveling on Beautiful Interstate 35
Despite the card’s title, the subject appears to be the overpass, smack dab in the middle of the image. At least those 20 clouds exhibit good composition. (Yes, we counted them, nothing else to do) Look closely and you'll see an actual automobile in the left lane—either coming, going, or stalled, it’s impossible to tell. One can only imagine what was going through the mind of the shutterbug who captured the scene for posterity. ‘Time for lunch!’
160 photographs and not a Kodak moment in the batch.
But, remember, that’s the point of this bad trip. In place of meaning and symbolism, the cards offer colors that probably seemed “lifelike” once. Today the tones are decidedly surreal; over-saturated or drained. The subject matter is beside the point, or several blocks away. Whatever one might reasonably define as “interesting” is nowhere to be seen.
At least some people will find the titles such as Site of Proposed Larger Taconite Plant poetic.
BORING POSTCARDS USA (From the collection of Martin Parr; Phaidon; $9.95) will leave you either in stitches or in tears, depending on your mood. It’s a retro eye-ball joyride over miles of gray pavement, brown grass, yellow-bled brick facades, russet factories, tawdry-mauve motel rooms, and putrescent green swimming pools. Browsing may trigger nightmares in Boomers, a la remember that lousy summer when we drove to California…that yuckky vacation we spent reading road signs, etc.
Younger viewers may experience a Twilight Zone-moment—sudden nostalgia for places never seen. Or maybe not. After all, highways are highways and toll booths are toll booths.
Art? Sociology? Pop Culture? A gag gift?
All of the above.
