Postcards from Djibouti

Speaking of photographic language, I seem to spend a lot of time finding artefacts which reveal the ways in which photography is used. In particular, I love postcard photographs, which illustrate (and often fall short of) pictorial photographic conventions of the times in which they were produced.

I found these three postcards of Djibouti, which are from the early 1900s, in India over the summer. They're exquisite.

DJIBOUTI - Mosquée Hamoudi (Unknown Artist)

DJIBOUTI - Vue générale prise due village indigène (Unknown Artist)

DJIBOUTI - L'Hôtel des Postes (Unknown Artist)

So much of what I love about these, especially the first and third pictures, is about gestures. People are moving in haphazard ways, caught awkwardly by the camera's gaze. Before photography, we would never have seen these things reproduced in this manner.