Հայաստանի Պատմության Թանգարանի Ազգագրական Բացիկ-Լուսանկարների Հավաքածուն / the Ethnographic Photo-Postcards' Collection Of the History Museum of Armenia

Abstract

The role of postcards has significantly decreased nowadays, with the appearance of modern means of communication. While the postcard is losing its primary importance, at the same time it is gaining a second life as an object of study for historians, cultural anthropologists, art historians and museologists. In the framework of this article, I will analyze the photo postcard collections making part of the ethnography funds of the History Museum of Armenia. The article is one of the first attempts to apply the multimodal approach to this particular collection. The approach suggests seeing the collection postcards as material objects with their specifics as stamps, marks and messages, as a source for the reconstruction of a historical, cultural and social context, and as a research method for studying different anthropological problems of particular historical periods.