Baby Face

More from my postcard collection today. A very good friend of mine has been about to give birth for the last week, so I'm hoping these lovely pictures of babies will encourage her to get on with it!  

The one above is truly bizarre. The headscarf, the elephant, the off-centre composition, the thing just out of shot - all very unsettling.

All these postcards were found in Crete. We were on holiday about ten years ago, and discovered a souvenir shop with an entire stand of these kitsch old postcards of children, families, couples. I bought about a hundred of them. I wish I'd got more, but at the time it seemed crazy enough to be buying that many!

I think it is (or was) a European phenomenon to publish postcards of quite ordinary domestic scenes. I can't imagine who would want to send or receive these cards. Or why that baby above was considered photogenic enough to merit two different postcards in different outfits.

Mind you, I find the next one positively menacing. Is it just me, or does she look like a wrestler about to come out fighting from her corner?

This last one is Italian - 'Buon Compleanno' means 'Happy Birthday', but that child looks about to burst into tears. Probably because some photographer has smeared his face with cake.