Return to Sender is a unique collection of more than one thousand postcards, representing images from Kosovo from the late 1800 to 1999. Mainly sent abroad, but also kept as souvenirs, these postcards bear images of architecture, landscape, people, culture, and monuments, often depicting the same location under different authorities – from the Ottomans to the various Serbian and Yugoslav monarchies, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Albania, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, Socialist Yugoslavia, and finally Serbia. But many postcards also preserve what the senders intended to communicate, whether short stories or simple greetings, written on the back.
Thanks to the collaboration with owner of the collection, Kenneth Andresen, Professor of Communication at the University of Agder, Norway, the Oral History Initiative is able to make these postcards publicly available, while developing research on the postcards as a cultural artifact in which history and individual stories intersect.
This link provides a small sample of the postcards. More will follow soon.