Postcards are commonly perceived as the most quotidian form of communication. Everyday, ordinary, indicative of leisure, their messages usually restricted to commonplaces, they seem to deny the imperatives of celerity and dispatch. And therein lies their charm.
If they are useless as transmission, something they usually do not even attempt, they are useful in indicating an indulgent remembrance, a mild concern, and wishes that you too were here. Wherever that is occupies the front of the card -- a scene, a view.
Postcards, however, increasingly have further uses. One of them is indicated by Leonard A. Lauder whose collection fills both this catalog and, at present, the Tokyo Communication Museum. He sees them, he says in his preface, as art -- "a fine print or, indeed, a water color."
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