Captured on card

SOMETIMES POIGNANT, SOMETIMES CRYPTIC AND ALWAYS PITHY, POSTCARDS CAN PROVIDE A SNAPSHOT OF MORE THAN JUST A HOLIDAY

Turning the clunky carousel to seek out the picture that sums up where you are, and then carefully choosing your words to set the scene in the small space on the back of a postcard: it’s an art that most of us, with the advent of social media and real-time sharing, don’t bother to indulge in any more. But Tom Jackson still finds delight in a postcard, particularly in the combination of words and images.

Using a Twitter account (@PastPostcard), Tom has been sharing his collection of 30,000 postcards, pairing each image with a well-chosen line from the back, often to humorouss effect (now captured in a book). He talks about their enduring appeal.