My 26 favorite Filipino postcards

I love postcards. My dad used to send them to us kids when he traveled a lot in the 1960s. In the late ‘70s I followed suit and sent back postcards of Europe to my folks. The last postcards I sent were to my eldest Juan Manuel when I traveled, mostly in Asia, for work in the ‘90s.

Since the ‘90s, I’ve collected old Philippine postcards. It started as an offshoot of my research on Philippine architecture and its allied arts of urban design, landscape architecture and planning. There was a dearth of documentation of our built and natural heritage. I found that postcards, mostly from the 20th century, were a great source for images and this got me started.

I started with a few bought from flea markets in Manila and Singapore (I lived there 12 years). Today, I have over a thousand. The collection is not as extensive as other people’s (the top guy has over 10,000) but it is focused.