One type of postcard I particularly enjoy is the street view. Unlike a postcard of a skyline or an aerial view of a city, the street view is intimate and personal. I get the sense of what it would be like to walk around in the place depicted on the card. It's interesting to me to see what the everyday spaces of people's lives look like and a shot of a street does that much better than a picture of a famous landmark. In addition to streets, I also like alleys, pictures of stores and restaurants, and public transportation. While the the onion domes of Russia and Ukraine are beautiful (and I have many postcards of that theme which I love), there is something about a more generic street or house that really appeals to me.

Perhaps this is because the card is a synecdoche and, according to Michel de Certeau, synecdoche "expands a spatial element in order to make it play the role of 'more' (a totality) and take its place (the bicycle or the piece of furniture in a store window stands for the whole street or neighborhood;" likewise, it "amplifies detail and miniaturizes the whole" (101). The street view takes a small part of a place and amplifies it, taking the viewer on a miniaturized tour.

Some people find this type of card boring. I have even had people apologize for sending me such a "boring" card even though I make it clear that I really like cards that show everyday scenes. While a postcard of the Eiffel Tower is exciting to receive, I already know what the Eiffel Tower looks like. I do not know what a narrow cobblestone street in a tucked-away corner of the Czech Republic looks like. These are the things that are interesting to me--much more so than an image I can easily bring up with a simple Google search.

Through these swellings, shrinkings, and fragmentations, that is, through these rhetorical operations a spatial phrasing of an analogical (composed of juxtaposed citations) and elliptical (made of gaps, lapses, and allusions) type is created. (de Certeau 101)

Every postcard is a rhetorical operation. A photographer chooses the subject matter, frames the photo, and takes the picture. He or she then perhaps spends some time editing: cropping, correcting light and shadow, changing hue and color saturation. Then, the image is sold and a company that prints postcards chooses to use the image. Sometimes, as in the above image, the location is not disclosed (this one is Cuba), but more often than not, the place is identified. It is sold as a representation of a particular place. A person buys the postcard because they either like the image or agree with the rhetorical representation. Then, they send the postcard to someone they think will like the image.

The card is certainly a shrinking, or a fragmentation. It does not and cannot give an image that encompasses everything about a place. Through the fragment, however, the receiver of the card reads the "spatial phrasing" in order to get a sense of what life is like in a certain place.One house stands for a multitude of houses of its type. The blue truck stands for the whole street. The street stands for Havana. Havana stands for Cuba. A postcard is a series of synecdoches, each fragment expanding and amplifying detail, composing a rhetorical whole.

Works Cited

Certeau, Michel de. "Walking in the City." The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Amazon Kindle Edition.