Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I have fallen for these European New Year’s cards before. The 2015 New Year’s installment was an array of French cards, also titled Bonne Annee, and I have owned this card for more than a year already waiting for the appropriate moment. (There was a post a French, April Fools card as well, April Fools? with goofy French cats fishing.) I purchased this card with the intention of giving it to my mother, she who is the protector of and interested in all things swan related. I promise to get it to her soon.

I am interested in the tradition of New Year’s cards. I had the extraordinary privilege of being present when John Carpenter, one of the curators at the Met, took someone through a collection of Japanese New Year’s cards and explained that at the time they were drawn, wealthy people commissioned these beautiful drawings as cards and on New Year’s Day they would go from house to house with them and present them as gifts. At each house they would be invited in for music and food. The drawings he was showing us were a recent acquisition at the time, and he hopes to do an exhibit of them. Somehow these rituals around New Year’s seem to suit me – better than freezing in Times Square I guess.

It appears the French have stuck with New Year’s cards as well – I am under the impression that they still favor them over any other form of Christmas or generic holiday card. Getting back to my card above, there is some strangeness in this image. First and most obvious, that little girl has that wicked smile on her face – is this the face of the New Year I want? I guess she is a variation on the baby New Year symbol. I have to admit that she actually looks a bit like my mother did as a kid as well. There aren’t tons of photos of her, but it does resemble the one photo I have of her at that age – minus the dangerous grin. Then there is the swan which a trick of photography has captured in between both two and three dimensional space. Stuffed swan or cut-out perhaps? It remains unclear to me. Also, I was always told that horseshoes should always go the other way so that the good luck would stay in, but I grant you, it is easier to hook on your arm this way and perhaps the French don’t subscribe to that theory. The swan can represent purity, but also strength and, clearly in this case, water – although I am not sure exactly what that says about the coming year.

When I was a kid I used to write the numbers of the outgoing year many times – thinking that I would soon miss writing it and in sympathy with the outgoing year. I have no such sympathy as I kick 2016 out and close the door on it today. Many of you were along for the ride while our apartment was torn up for months in the spring; we all suffered through the political landscape; and even the Met was plagued considerably which rocked my professional life. Saddest of all, in the closing days of the year Kim and I lost a good friend, Rich Conaty, to cancer; additionally a Met colleague, Ron Street; and heard of the illness of still another friend. We here at Pictorama and Deitch Studios are grateful to have scraped through the year of ’16 and will pull up our socks for a productive and best ever Bonne Annèe  and we wish the same for each and everyone of you!