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484 Lilia Uzlowa The Postcard: A Visual and Textual Form of Communication The sent postcard, a classic instrument of communication related mainly to travel, leisure and tourism, is a complex visual and textual product of a group of identities: the photographer/publisher’s, the sender/addresser’s and the receiver/addressee’s. The pictorial otherness in the communication process has two standard roles. The postcard has two sides: image (landscapes, hotels, personalities, sightseeing, monuments, etc.) and text. On the one hand, it is “sent” to the receiver: “I arrived. This is the place. Look where I am!”, and on the other, the sender comments on it with the textual message: “Look how I feel here, at the other place! It is a postcard—not photography. Somebody has seen this place like that. Not I. I bought the postcard and the image expresses my choice.”' The “equation” that constructs the main thesis contains two known and two unknown quantities: the reality of the stay and the identity parameters in the context of the visit versus the addressee’s identity in the context of residence. Known and unknown variables are rarely in conflict with each other. Most often, they are mutually complementary and create a symbiosis, which is both multifaceted and logically justified. The postcard is “born” for the needs of everyday life and very soon after that it already has two equally important sides, through which not only quick and short messages between the addresser and the addressee are transferred, but they also contain the codes of modern identities and realities. Pamela E. Arkarian-Russell studies the holidaypostcard—“these bits of social—and philatelic history” as a presentation of “the similarities as well as the differences in these holidays, both imaginary and celebration, are an important part of our social history. These cards document the what and how of another time. Historians, architects, and costumers are just a few of the people who turn to postcards to authenticate and date styles and events” (Arkarian-Russell 2001: viii). The main thesis of this paper is otherness, accepted individually, identity or group of identities and their individual choice (not “our social history”, as Arkarian-Russell studies). We understand the postcard first of all as an individual adventure not as a social phenomenon. Alison Rowley concurs too: “Picture postcards are tantalizing objects, central to understanding the social history and visual culture ... that have the power not ' The object of the research is only used postcards, i.e. chosen, bought, and sent to more or less a known receiver. Only in this case do they serve their purpose as a means of individual communication. It is a connecting link between the motif on the face of the postcard and the message on the back of it.
