Inspiring voyeurism

Stealing fates as perceptive experience

It begun in a small second hand bookshop somewhere in Marburg. This picturesque university town in the midst of vineyards exuded always its mysterious aura. But you can find a second hand bookshops in every random city, so the place and the time were irrelevant for this discovery. Just random.

I entered the shop and first thing I’ve seen was a small shelf with used postcards. You surely know such card stands in book shops, flea markets etc.: countless postcards, sent X years ago from person A to person B. The cards way from person B to the shop could have many explanations, set free your imagination.

People buy such cards in order to have some retro vistas or to collect rare images of meanwhile bombed, rebuild, metamorphosed cities. And an unused, blank postcard is usually a way expensive than a written one. But I was touched by another thing.

I found this card.

A non-serial postcard, rather a private photograph: a slightly older man, in a military uniform is sitting on the white horse. Trees (a garden?) in the background.

Flipping the card, I read this Spartan text, written with a swinging handwriting in German: