French Postcards

June 10, 2012

French Postcards

These postcards are from my mother’s travels in France for two years, learning French and other unknown stories on the perils of dating as a twenty-something, that to this day she continually refuses to share with me.. before moving to Chicago, Seattle, and then Los Angeles while raising my (older) cousins and where she eventually met my father.

Though it may sound a somewhat unusual romance, my aunt and my mother’s brother married in Paris, France in 1975, falling in love and quietly marrying in the quintessential proclaimed city of romantic love. My mother, at the time, was in Southeast Asia, finishing her degree at the University of Thailand (where, so she says and evidenced by several worn photographs, the degree is handed to the student by the King, himself) and working for a few years before joining her brothers in France.

While reading through these set of postcards and photographs worn by time, I am constantly reminded of my first two years of studies in art history and european literature, wistfully longing to attending the field school program as precocious second year college student, and beginning to work-play with a camera since my days in the darkroom in highschool. It’s difficult for me to describe how and why exactly these postcards always fill me with a longing that rises to my throat and chokes me, sometimes. However, in a sketchbook in 1856, the French painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot wrote first, and best,