Postcards from Molly Bloom

As a postcard collector for over 40 years, I’ve collected many topics. But perhaps the most fun was finding and assembling postcards that illustrate the famous ending of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses, published in book form in 1922. So specific are some of these images — like a sleepy mule in Gibraltar or a night boat leaving the quay at Algeciras, or a multitude of women sporting a white or red rose in their hair — that I came to suspect postcards were the inspiration for some of Joyce’s passages. After all, he and his wife Nora, the inspiration for Molly, lived in exile when he was writing Ulysses 1914-1921, and both were prolific correspondents. It was the golden age of postcards, and certainly James and Nora must have written and received many, I surmised. 

In fact, I’ve since learned that James Joyce sent at least 887 postcards in his lifetime. These are all catalogued and most are accessible in archives in the US and Ireland and elsewhere. 

Postcards from Molly Bloom -- my collection and hopefully soon to be a book -- are not Joyce’s actual postcards, but rather cards from the early 20th century that pictorially mirror the stream of thoughts of Molly Bloom that end Ulysses: Molly’s rambling and randy musings as she falls asleep, recalling her childhood in Gibraltar where she was a “flower of the mountain,” and the day Leopold Bloom proposed, with Molly’s cascade of yeses. 

 Ulysses is considered one of the densest and least accessible books of modern times (second only to Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake). But Molly’s final passages are a delightful and easy read, all the more so when illustrated with postcards! 

Here’s a small sample.

let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 

theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep

except an odd priest or two for his night office

what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars

shall I wear a white rose

god of heaven there's nothing like nature the wild mountains

because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience

they might as well try to keep the sun from rising tomorrow

the sun shines for you he said

the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head

in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat

I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky 

I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of... the sailors playing all birds fly

and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras

the watchman going about serene with his lamp

and I thought well as well him as another

yes I said yes I will Yes

Through a Lens Darkly

      gif animation by Marilyn Stern from trailer

   

Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People is a must-see film by Thomas Allen Harris, 10 years in the making. Released Jan 17, 2014. Premiered in NYC Aug 29, 2014. HELD OVER AT FILM FORUM, NYC, THROUGH TUES SEPT 16, 2014. 

Lens Darkly is based on the book published in 2000 Reflections in Black by Deborah Willis, who also co-produced and co-wrote Lens Darkly.  Her book is considered to be the first comprehensive history of African American photographers. One reviewer called it epic and magnificent, said it "rewrites American history." The same can surely be said of Harris and Willis's film.

"Our salvation as a people, as a culture, depends on salving the wounds of this war. A war of images within the American family album," says Harris in the movie's trailer.

In the war he speaks of, postcards played a big role, and they take a well-deserved drubbing in the film. The ones shown are, admittedly, all too typical. In the early 20th century, in both north & south, racial stereotypes were good for marketing -- of postcards, movies, breakfast cereal, you name it. At the least, they bolstered a sense of white entitlement and superiority. At worst, they helped justify Jim Crow segregation, oppression, the reign of terror of lynchings and burnings. Yes, there were even postcards made of these horrors, sent through the mail with cheerful greetings. And these too are included in Lens Darkly, giving double entendre and deep resonance to the film's title.

The racism in old postcards has long depressed and angered me. For the past several years, I've been on the lookout for "outliers" -- cards that portray African Americans and other people of color with dignity, or at least race neutrality. My collection is small but growing. I promise to post a sampling in this blog soon.

The point of Lens Darkly is not that such positive images didn't exist. Rather, it is that Americans of color must take control of their own visual representation.  In fact, the film shows, there have been photographers of color almost since the inception of photography, though their work has sadly sunk into obscurity. This eloquent and exhaustively-researched film should help remedy this.

In one and a half hours, Harris and Willis's film takes on huge range and complexity. One motif is how photography has been used to both belittle and oppress, but also to empower. Many viewers will be familiar with the so-called ethnographic photos of the 19th century, and images of Africans and other "barbarians" on display at fairs. But who knew that Booker T. Washington established a photography department at Tuskegee U with a grant from George Eastman?  Or that W.E.B. Du Bois curated an exhibit of Afro-American photography for the Paris Exposition of 1900, allowing Europeans a more accurate view of a culture hidden from white Americans? 

The film gives equal emphasis to such superstars as James Van Der Zee, Roy DeCarava and Gordon Parks, and little- or un-known photographers in all eras, including black women studio photographers of the 1920s(?) and LGBT fine art photographers of today.

Harris, a photographer himself and quite charming guy (I met him at a New York screening), clearly elicits trust and ease from his subjects. Carrie Mae Weems, for instance, openly tells him/us that her work is about loss and a craving for love.

Artistically inspiring. Historically enlightening. And a non-stop display of amazing photography at the extremes of ugly and beautiful.  Through a Lens Darkly is essential viewing. It opens across the U.S. this Fall (2014). 

See trailer: http://1world1family.me/through-a-lens-darkly/