Author's collection of the strangest postcards from the past

Illustrator Sveta Dorosheva collects vintage postcards. Among the exhibits of her collection there are both ordinary and rare, and quite strange and ambiguous. A selection of the latest Sveta shared with the public. Next — her story.

I collect old postcards. There are a lot of beautiful things there — luxurious retrodives, amazing paintings, hats, dresses and shameless outfits… But the most amazing thing is to consider how much the plots have changed. Most of the plots are impossible to imagine on modern postcards, and some are now taboo altogether. For example, a smoking child: it was touching — it became outrageous.

Or here:

"Morphinists". My favorite postcard. The plot is absolutely impossible these days, but what wonderful devils they are!

Or imagine — you get a postcard from a dear friend with the disturbing plot "Anatomy of the heart": a thoughtful anatomist stands over a naked female body and holds her heart in his hand. Admiring in pince-nez.

On the back, by the way, is a love letter.

And so, I imagine, the cheeky girl gets a postcard and thinks:

And it turns out that they have, as it were, two layers of correspondence: one in words, and the second, latent, in plots. This is not a Japanese smiley face at the end of a sentence…

A couple more anatomists: a popular story in postcards…

Less refined lovers used more obvious plots:

She is waiting for his caresses. Everything is clear. No discrepancies.

And here are the engaged ones. These here are ozhenili.

And these are crazy, it's obvious.

I'll show you some more strange dramatic plots:

"The Drama of life".

Everything is clear here. On the one hand — a wife, children, and on the other — a beckoning siren. Drama as it is. On the back, someone wrote down a piece from Gumilev:

In my opinion, you can't illustrate it better. I always look at this postcard and think: I wonder if it belonged to a man or a woman? In other words, who sent it to whom: the siren to her married lover or he to her: they say, I love you and your diamond suns, but the children are sitting under the benches, 15 years of living together, we have sprouted into each other. I'm sorry, siren, I can't sail away with you to inaccessible constellations... and today I scanned — I look: there is no stamp. So — a woman after all. I wrote to him and didn't send it. Because in unhappy love, women become suspicious, vulnerable and modest. They will write about themselves in the constellations and immediately realize: what if not? What if I'm not a beckoning star, but a Tweety from a soap factory? I won't send…

Here are more plots that I can't imagine in a modern postcard.

Little Red Riding Hood here in this performance.

"The visionary Widow."

I remember a friend and I argued whether the artist had deliberately depicted a shadow on the widow's skirt in the form of an erect shameful oud, or so ... it happened by accident.

And finally, incredibly strange zombies.

It's scary to guess what it's about… There was such a movie in the 60s - Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed—up Zombies ("Incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and turned into confused zombies"). This postcard could serve as a poster for him.

I like it when the card is signed. Then the plot also acquires a context, sometimes funny, sometimes banal. Let's say that a person tried, wrote an essay for the picture "Coquetry".

(Punctuation and spelling are preserved, sorry, I can't reproduce.)

But Marusya was waiting at the station for her train and give, she thinks, a couple of lines to her friend cherkan? I bought the first postcard I came across, and writes:

And Lelya got it, read twice about cherries, turned it over…

Lelia looked at the candy ladies, who probably never rolled up a single jar of jam in her life... she prevented the boiling in a bucket on the stove, singed a blue plucked chicken over the fire, wiped her red hands on her apron, looked at the young ladies again, turned them over and read about cherries... And burst into tears for something about the incomprehensible, about babsky…

But the person was looking for a plot, trying to make the text and the picture form a complete harmony.

Look at what's on the back!!!

Well, the most enigmatic plot + signature in my collection.

Turnover: "Now I will."