I have a personal collection of postcards from places I have visited but chose to complete an internet search for postcards of the town I live in Skipton. I did this so I could make an evaluation of what is shown of an ordinary northern market town and then think about my experience of living in it.

They all show celebrated places within the town, places that draw visitors in to the town to enjoy a visit. Be it the Parish Church, the War memorial, Canal, Castle or the High Street.

The majority show the streets empty or nearly empty of both people and traffic. Some show a few people going about normal business. These people are well dressed prosperous but small within the frame, the main thing is to show a cohesive space being well used.

The one that is different is the postcard showing fair day in Skipton High Street. It is a coloured/painted photo of a scene full of people enjoying a fair. Livestock is on offer and people again well dressed are buying the livestock or at least judging it. This card celebrates the cohesive nature of the society.

All show tree and plants in full bloom giving the impression of a leafy town full of bloom. They also show blue skies mottled with cumulus clouds. Some of these look manipulated.

My experience of the place is that it is like the postcards for a quarter of the year. The rest of the time it is a Northern market town with its share of terraced housing lining the hills. These are worthy of a postcard themselves. The Mills, Canal and Farm Market are working places that all produced pollution in the past but would be worthy of a collection of postcards to show the nature of our town. All have fine interesting people making their livelihoods these would make a superb study to show the soul of this place.

The postcards I found are attractive to the brief visitors who have visited fleetingly by coach for the day or passed through on their way to days walking in the day. They don’t show the soul of the place.

Graham Cross says of Friths postcards from Egypt “Francis Frith’s images of Egypt, for example, for all their concern with foreign lands, retain the perspective of an Englishman looking out over the land.”

This statement applies to the postcards Frith produced of Egypt. They follow a formula. All are shown from the perspective of a tourist an outsider. They celebrate the fact that you visited this place. They show it factually, as a record of what is there.

People are only used as a reference of scale. Like the postcards of Skipton they could have been made interesting if the photographer had got involved with the people and shown how they related to the shown objects.

All are like painting from the Grand Tour gentleman took to broaden their horizons. Taken from above or using perspective to draw the eye across the vista. All are good pictures but lack depth and only invite a fleeting glance. They could have been much improved if the recorder had got involved with the landscape and shown some of the details or the effect tourism had on it.

When I went to the Pyramids I thought the interesting scene was if you turned around to see Burger King and KFC. Certainly not how Frith wanted us to see the Pyramids.

In 2020 we have been in a state of lockdown I looked at Whitby on a webcam the first Sunday of lockdown. Then I looked at other places around the world and every place was devoid of people, I had never seen any of these place like this. The captured photos reminded me of postcards. So I have tried to make the images into postcards.