NTBD (Not to be Digitized) is site-specific installation of new two-sided paintings based on postcards of Australia by Melbourne-born, New York- based Ry David Bradley. Coming across the hand written note ‘Not to be Digitized’ on a cupboard within the New York Public Library’s ‘Pictures Collection’, Bradley was intrigued as to what lay inside. The Pictures Collection is an unparalleled visual resource, containing well over one million original prints, photographs, posters, postcards and illustrations from books, magazines, newspapers and classifieds. It's a global collection, indexed across 12,000 subject headings. That said, the postcards weren’t catalogued, or indeed collated, in any specific manner.

It led Bradley to reflect on the manner in which similar communiques are undertaken today. Primarily digital, traversing in encrypted binary and existing ‘virtually’, today’s postcards can’t be placed on the fridge - Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and other forms of contemporary communication apps and technology have supplanted the postcard, yet still the postcard persists. It’s maybe similar to how paintings are considered anachronistic? 

Ry David Bradley - NTBD (Not to be Digitized) 
Tristian Koenig, Sydney Off-site Project, December 15-20
www.tristiankoenig.com