Old postcards are the WhatsApp messages of today: what you did and where you went

This week Alice’s Table is back at the table with Stephen Hermida as we continue to discover some of the images from his large old postcard collection. Last time we visited we took a trip down to the beaches to view what they looked like in the past, and if there had been many changes – certainly not many on Catalan Bay but on all other beaches there was really no accessible.

Civilians for example would not have been allowed on Sandy Bay or Western Beach as on Rosia Bay (El Quarry and Little Bay were used for other purposes) until long after the 1940s. But today we are not taking our sunshade to the beaches but looking around the Rock and at some of the people who roamed our streets – locals, military, travellers and sellers – and the images writers would have selected to send back home or for communicating with other businesses.

As Stephen and I resume our conversation and chat about the many different views of Gibraltar which today form most of the postcard images of yesterday – he suddenly says, “Postcards had purpose – they were a form of communication – how people, how business communicated - sending messages to family and friends, they were like souvenirs, and in a sense they are today’s ‘WhatsApp’ messages and this made (and make) them all the more important.

“It is how people kept in touch very much in the same way as we do today with our mobiles but with far less immediacy, and which first needed to be bought, posted and sent by mail, before any communication took place.”

The sender needed to make the effort to go to the post office, pay for the postage and then mail it so that it was delivered to the address on the card.

“Then Gibraltar was an important link in the British Empire. It was the first and last port of call before arriving or departing the British Mainland. That is why Gibraltar postcards are so valued,” he adds.

There are, he explains, many of them (and on the views of the Rock there was a great variety of choice) because Britain at the time had the Empire and these postcards would be sent across the Empire in business and as personal messages – “simply put in that time postcards made an impact because Britain had a sprawling Empire and it was it was also an important shipping route, and Gibraltar postcards would have travelled far and wide.”

It must be remembered too that in the old days this would have also seen an overlap between naval, military and the Gibraltar collector, who would have collected different themed cards. The reason why some are more expensive than others is precisely because they have over the years attracted a great variety of collectors around the globe.

The bulk of Gibraltar postcards are of the Rock but there are some priceless images of the side streets and the people of Gibraltar – and some can be appreciated on these pages.

As we discuss the value of old postcards when photographs captured these historical images of Gibraltar we must not forget that the agency or agencies – the sellers of these postcards we admire today – was because they were a commercial enterprise. Their interest was not an historical documentation of how the Rock looked but as a selling item – the photographs turned into postcards for commercial usage would have been taken in order to sell them commercially as postcards, and at times in very large quantities.

All postcards collected today give an insight into the many changes that have taken place in Gibraltar since postcards were first produced.

I ask Stephen, if he has ever been attracted to capturing the same images as some of his postcards to make a comparison?

“That's a project I would like possibly to do in the next few years. Another project when I begin to travel less… and I guess that my photography too, in future, will need to find a new approach and a different direction.”

There’s one to add to his long list of TO DO things – but it would certainly be a worthwhile project which should present us with visual evidence of the changes – or maybe not. The images on these pages this week are a selection of people roaming our streets and the changing physical aspect of some of our well-known haunts… There is no doubt some show signs of little change but others are beyond recognition.