Send Me A Postcard:Execution Postcards.

"They're selling postcards of the hanging" - Desolation Row, Bob Dylan

We've all sent and received a postcard. What do you think of when you think of the image on the front? A beach? A historic castle or palace? Some beautiful scenery? What about somebody being garrotted in Mexico or an Italian firing squad shooting someone dead?

Last night I joined the London Fortean Society at The Bell in Whitechapel for The Brutality of Spectacle:A Brief History of the Execution Postcard to hear a little about these grisly, and seemingly once popular, artefacts. I wasn't sure if it would be particularly interesting, it is a little niche, but it turned out to be a great evening. Although one that is hard to capture in blog form because it was highly discursive.

I'll give it a go. The speakers, historian Jennifer Wallis and conceptual artist John B Bernard - a couple who met and got together, when he showed her his etchings/execution postcards, began by outlining how death and photography had long gone hand in hand. In the early days of photography, it was not uncommon to take a photo of a dead family member to remember them by.

That's something we'd probably blanch at now - preferring to remember people in life rather than after death - but it didn't seem to worry the Victorians. Even that though is hardly comparable to sending a jauntily written postcard to a friend, family member, or sweetheart with a cover image of a bandit gang stoned to death in Afghanistan, a Chinese strangulation device in operation, or black men being lynched in America.

Some are in the form of illustrations but it's the photographs that disturb the most. The lynching photo shows a joyful crowd of white folk, some in their Sunday best, gleefully celebrating both the lynching and the photo op. They're not ashamed to be there. They're proud. It's a family event. As the Chinese prisoners are gradually strangled by horrific torture devices a seemingly unbothered crowd mills around a market stall in the background. 

As if it's absolutely no big deal. That's what happens with othering and dehumanisation. The French philosopher Georges Bataille noted that some people, on the point of execution, seem to appear both in extreme agony and almost somehow joyful. In the case of the Chinese victims of lin-chi (where you have your body slowly cut up into about hundred or more pieces, the death by a thousand cuts) that may be because they've been given opium before execution so that they don't die too quickly and can fully experience the pain of their own death.

Families of some of those subjected to lin-chi would bribe executioners to make a stab in the heart right at the start so that they at least die quickly. Albert Camus observed not so much the "joy" of the victims but how much the gathering crowds who watch these grim spectacles seemed to get off on it. As long as humans are fascinated by death, to an almost pornographic degree, there's always a danger of this happening.

Wallis and Bernard are looking at creating both an exhibition and an academic book on these execution postcards but they admitted they had moral qualms that they had not yet fully squared. Some of the images shown were cropped and there was a lot of talk of gatekeeping, positionality, and how an image of, for example, a lynching may be viewed very differently by a black person than it would be by a white person.

During the Q&A, I was tempted to ask a question wondering if there were ever any British equivalents to these postcards and then I looked around the pub I was in. It was in Whitechapel so they were selling Jack the Ripper t-shirts and promoting Jack the Ripper walks (on the way to and from the pub I passed the controversial Jack the Chipper fish and chip shop) and I soon realised that we're not really that different.

We're all fascinated by death but I'm certainly glad that most sane countries in the world country have got rid of the death penalty and we no longer gather in crowds to watch people die and then send postcards to celebrate the experience. Thanks to Dewi, Jade, Michael, Tim, Paula, and Jackie for joining me last night, thanks to David and the LFS for hosting, and thanks to Jennifer and John for a fascinating talk about a very grim subject.