It’s already become nearly impossible for some of us to remember what it was like to experience and record the day’s events without the Web – a good number of people in their 20s probably would consider doing so a complete waste of time.
Yet there is a power in paper to move, especially when that paper is from long past. Dylan Stone’s “100 years of personal pocket diaries, 100 years of receipts and invoices, 100 years of printed programmes” underscores this perfectly.
Featuring one pocket diary, invoice, printed program and receipt for each year in the 20th century, the exhibit gives the impression of communing with ghosts. We’ll let the exhibit materials give you a taste:
“In one diary, a British schoolboy vividly chronicles in his drawings what he hears on the radio, that day in 1941. During the first half of the century, financial transactions are recorded by hand on stationery paper of many shapes and forms. In fine scripts or hurried scribbles, these drawings carry an undeniable personal touch. They give us insights into quotidian life, through detailing specific purchases and prices: a hat, car repairs, a room in a hotel. A program from 1946 by the Piccadilly Theater invites us to see Vivien Leigh in “The Skin of Our Teeth” by Thornton Wilder and directed by Laurence Olivier.”
