That’s what tourists and locals used to tell me many years ago when they asked me to develop photos of their stay in the coastal town where I grew up. I also sold many stamps for postcards. The text written on the back of the postcard was almost telegraphic: Dearest, X. We arrived safely. The weather is fantastic, and the beach awaits us. We send you our regards. Say hello to X for us. A kiss. X and X. 

The fifteen by ten size became popular, and we all ended up using it in one way or another. When we left our place of origin, documenting the journey analogically and wishing to have those memories printed in that format, and/or sending the postcard of the day. This gave rise to a photographic sub-genre that immortalized Insistent points of view of beaches from the sea, hotels and flats ,people on the beach or having a drink as if they were photographing themselves, picturesque locals, cities at night (in the dark), monuments, heritage of all kinds and those first aerial shots (pre-drones). They were heirs of military documentation, which ended up in the real estate market. In the end, one could find postcards in less expected places: tobacconists, stationers, souvenir shops, grocery stores, bars,wine cellars, hotels, museums...

The appearance and consumption of this type of material began here with the boom in tourism in the 1960s, and has continued to this day, beyond digital communication as something nostalgic and kitsch. In the midst of Franco’s regime, Spain was projected as a tourist destination through images that disguised the reality of an oppressive and censoring regime. Like a visual assassination, many other realities were buried. A whole “amiable” folkloric repertoire in which a large part of the population did not recognise itself and which continues, even today, to have a significance. Like in that sun cocktail, bulls and castanets that have turned us into a territory that has assumed its will to satisfy the conquering foreigner.Perhaps history itself has given us back our imperialist eagerness of the so-called Golden Age. In any case, and for many decades, this gold vein that tourism also represented, especially in the Mediterranean area of the country, established two profiles of people (in reality, three): those few who could afford to travel; those who could not afford to travel; those who lived seasonally from those who traveled; and those who traveled (or not) and worked for those who lived off the tourists. It was necessary one way or another! In this context, the postcard makers emerged. Objects that carry and exhibit all this incredible identity material. Showing what they say we are.

 My father inherited the family business from his parents, which arose in that context. For many years he dedicated himself to replacing the postcards of all the existing views of the three towns belonging to the municipality of my village. The shop used to open in the afternoon. He would come and go from a small storeroom in which a dark brown piece of furniture housed piles of all these views. The postcards were bought from a distributor in the neighboring nucleus and they came a hundred at a time, wrapped in transparent cellophane paper. This fact was important to identify each postcard, as there were very similar models in which, practically, only the name of the municipality was changed. Written at the top right instead of at the bottom left, or in the same place but in yellow instead of red. My father did this work of observation and repositioning with a certain religiousness and discipline. The postcard holder in question was a vertical, tripod-shaped display stand, somewhat unstable (the table or counter ones were more proportionate in height and the number of postcards they could hold), and of an uncertain color, somewhere between green and bluish. The postcards could be placed vertically or horizontally, depending on the shot, and the idea was to go round and round (not without a certain squeak) to be able to see them all repeatedly and decide which one to take. It was like traveling for a few seconds between repeated representations of seascapes. A diorama. When there were more than one person rolling, there was a certain conflict as they had to agree on when and where to turn. “The pictures on the walls and the photos in the books”. Cartier-Bresson anticipated at the time - but the postcard format and the postcard itself powerfully transgressed that premise as palpable and portable windows into another world. For a time, it was I who managed those postcards. In a conscious actand resistant to my father’s, I decided which models to put and where to put them. [1] - but the postcard format and the postcard itself powerfully transgressed that premise as palpable and portable windows into another world. For a time, it was I who managed those postcards. In a conscious actand resistant to my father’s, I decided which models to put and where to put them.

Standing upright, I approach one of these postcard holders, look at the people around me and turn it over and look at it while deciding whether or not to keep any of the extraordinary “postcards” it contains. The others are talking, laughing, smoking, drinking, sitting on the sidewalk, some of them look at me and others go in and out of the art gallery. There is an office but everything is very open. Beyond the contents of this souvenir designed to keep us informed from a distance and via postcard. The postcard is an element that creates a network in a sort of a face-to-face ceremonial way that makes it necessary to travel. Today, postcards are in short supply. For the same reason, when we receive one, we keep it in a drawer or display it with a magnet on the fridge. They are images that remind us of someone or somewhere. Gestures of proximity from afar. Objects that we collect and fetishise.Wandering through a postcard holder becomes an obligatory action of shared enjoyment. That’s what happened in Granada in 2017 when Azahara López Maldonado coordinated the first three editions of a project that revolved around an object like this. Something that was taken up again four years later by the hands, bodies and heads of Louise K. Houtman, Elena Lara and Daniel Medina, [2]achieving a stable programming until today. An object that has been going round and round, literally and digitally since it was “found” a few years ago in Granada. But what on earth was a Postalero doing in a Lavadero? In the same way that in its beginnings, this object could be found in any public place or establishment, this one was guarded for some time by Miguel Ángel Moreno Carretero and Fran Pérez Rus. As “spaces” that, by definition, entail actions, the Lavadero and the Postalero have grown together, bringing together around them a great many people from the artistic scene in Granada and beyond. A postalero is a relational performative device in which bodies move around it. That’s whythings happen every time it is reactivated and turned around. Writing about it adds movement. Nothing stands still.