BLURRED ENDS

Tulane University
Spring 2021

Souvenirs are everywhere in New Orleans. From salt and pepper shakers to keychains and magnets, the city is filled with memorabilia that appeals to tourists looking for a token or keepsake that would remind them of a vacation taken, a place visited, or an experience lived. These souvenirs are cheap, colorful, and easy to gift. They are also highly mobile. The postcard, for instance, not only does it evoke memories of travel, but also travels from the hands of the sender to those of the recipient through the hands of multiple mail carriers. More than a memory, they are carriers of a message open for anyone to read.

Architects have, directly or indirectly, always engaged in the making of souvenirs. The training of the Renaissance architect in pictorial forms of representation and in Roman architectural history was, according to Basile Baudez, directly linked to the production of souvenirs. The work of Soufflot, for instance, is evidence of how the city of Rome was swiftly rendered and sold to passersby travelers, and locals alike. In this commercial exchange, souvenirs became effective agents for place-making: their capacity to capture and disseminate the image of a place built its perceived value through the representation and translation of elements found within its landscape. If a building is depicted in a postcard, it is not only because someone decided to transform it into a commodity, but also because it is generally understood as a characteristic feature of the place; each subsequent depiction will only confirm its price status.

Postcards are kitsch. If the plans of Rome by Giambattista Nolli are a meticulous depiction that speaks to those trained to understand orthographic projection and cartography, the postcard simplifies and makes explicit the experience of a place. As Susan Sontag writes about photography – and by extension also about postcards that feature photographs, a camera is a tool that democratizes experiences by making them perceptually available to others. Yes, in Greenberg’s terms, postcards are kitsch: their images have already been digested by their authors who make their purpose explicit. The depictions are easy to read, understand, and relate to. And yet, this is their power. If their mobility makes their audience expansive, their digestibility turns this niche, often overlooked medium into an influential agent of our ever-expanding image culture.  

Assuming the role of the architect-in-training described by Baudez, the work presented here intends to leverage the power of the postcard to shift the narratives about the city of New Orleans – from a historic city of extraordinary uniqueness to one of extraordinary ‘ordinary’, plagued by issues that ought to be brought to the front of the socio-cultural conversations of the city in order to begin to find a solution to them.

Curated by: Emmanuel Osorno / Architecture and Social Innovation Fellow

Sources:

  • Baudez, Basile. A souvenir and survey. Drawing Matter, June 22, 2017. https://drawingmatter.org/francois-soufflot-le-romain-baudez/. 

  • Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Essay. In Art and Culture: Critical Essays, 3–33. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1961.

  • Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York, NY: Picador, 1977.

  • Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1972.