ABSTRACT
Before the Internet, before mobile devices, and even before the invention of the aeroplane, a cancellation mark on the stamp of a postcard, validating one’s physical presence at the top platform of the Eiffel Tower when it was inaugurated during the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, was the closest thing, for the recipient of that postcard, to being there. Until web surfing to any place on the planet became a possibility, ‘travel’ was never so easy. All it took was imagination to put a static image into performative play. The arrival of a card, with its image, handwritten message, stamp, and postmark noting the time, date and location of the sender, shifted the recipient’s physical site to the place in that space between her fingertips. The card, having been posted by the sender, travelled across space and time to touch down at a destination elsewhere on the globe.
