A Square Meal: Postcards of Food From Africa and the Diaspora

Charleston, SC.

Humans have always been collectors. Prehistoric graves contain heaps of shiny pebbles, rudimentary jewelry, and other items that bear millennial witness to our gathering instinct. The Egyptians, master accumulators indeed, truly believed that they could take it with them and, in attempting to do so, left an impressive record of their civilization. I, too, am a gatherer: Among other pursuits, I am a collector of postcards. I have spent more than thirty-five years as a deltiologist roaming the world, always on the lookout for the little piece of pasteboard that would complete my collection, add another valence to its scope, or just plain make me smile with delight.

Deltiology, the hobby of collecting postcards, began as a pursuit in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Postcards were developed in the 1860s and became wildly popular by the early twentieth century; their images, even more than the messages they carry, bear witness to how entire cultures have changed. In the United States, they document postbellum agricultural pursuits and the growth of cities after the Civil War. In Africa and the Caribbean, they provide a visual record of the apogee and decline of colonialism. The small rectangular pasteboard souvenirs house memory; they are photographic witnesses of a world that was and is no more.

Early postcards were designed for European and American markets and reveal the prevailing prejudices and predilections of their period. As photography hadn’t then attained a dominant sense of conscious social commentary (excepting the battlefield photography of Mathew Brady and the like), many early postcards were posed. Some postcard scholars wrestle with questions of photographers’ intent and Europe’s view of the “other.” They focus on the details revealed in the photographs: the shape of a head-tie, the fabric of a dress, the gesture of a hand, and the use of a tool. Whatever the point of view, it is undeniable that the cards reveal innumerable aspects of material culture. In them, we see art, craft, and design. The cards can also reanimate destroyed buildings and streets long forgotten, the dress of bygone eras, and practices fallen out of use. Most important, they provide a narrative lens for understanding the lives of those who have gone before, captured for eternity in the dignity of their work, the calm of their repose, and the joy of their festive occasions.

My postcard journey began as I was working on my doctoral dissertation on the French-speaking theater of Senegal. I journeyed to that West African nation to do my preliminary research in the early 1970s. There, I discovered several books that reprinted antiquarian postcards of West African scenes and presented a vivid photographic memorial of the way things had been. Many were images taken by Francois-Edmond Fortier, a Frenchman who was an early documentary photographer and ethnographer and published more than 3,000 postcards of French West Africa during his lifetime. Through his camera, the dusty streets of Senegal’s past sprang vividly to life. I was captivated by the postcards’ ability to fix the past into visual view. I began collecting cards that appealed to me: a street scene here, a marketplace there. I ended up illustrating my dissertation with postcards and other ephemera.

Benin (misidentified as Dakar).

The focus of my major collection evolved in 1993 when I was at work on my fifth cookbook, The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking. Charged with finding illustrations to complete the work, I knew that I again wanted postcards: archival images that would convey the depth of history and give a visual portrayal of the past.

By then, my work in the world of food had defined my collecting interest as well. The years had narrowed my collecting down to postcards depicting Africans in their homeland and in the diaspora with food: fishing, farming, vending, serving, and consuming. I also collected images of celebrations: dances, dinners, and religious and cultural ceremonies. Each subcategory offers not only a view...