A tiny postcard project exploring how the ways we connect, share and expose ourselves have changed over the past three decades. An encounter between a 1995 BRAVO, forgotten addresses and the possibility of reaching out to strangers across time.
Collaborative project · With: Elizabeth Legate
It starts with a 1995 issue of BRAVO and its section “Bravo Treffpunkt”, where teenagers published small personal advertisements looking for pen pals and new connections. To receive a letter, they openly shared their private addresses — a gesture that today feels strikingly intimate.
These addresses became the starting point for an exploration of how ideas of privacy and connection have changed. From letters and postcards to SMS, email, social media and voice messages the means of reaching others have become faster and more immediate, while also transforming what it means to make oneself accessible.
The original magazine pages were turned into postcards and sent to the addresses found in the BRAVO magazine, carrying a simple greeting from 1995 into the present. Whether the original recipients — or their families — still live there remains unknown and deliberately unresolved.
This fun project is less about reaching a particular person than about the gesture itself: sending a small, physical sign of connection into the world at a time when communication is increasingly mediated, filtered and enclosed.
