Local photographer creates satirical, U.P. postcards

The relentless presence of mosquitoes in the Upper Peninsula isn’t usually a laughing matter. But it is with U.P.  photographer Tom Buchkoe’s latest Yooper Postcard project. One postcard that is sold in stores from St. Ignace to Menominee is "Yooper Summer Games," which features men with shotguns to the sky, pointed at saucer-shaped mosquitoes in the sky.

The idea for Buchkoe’s wry postcards came from a family trip to Montana 15 years ago. He was in a shop and noticed certain postcards that inspired him.

"There is a company called Duck Boy that does humorous postcards, and they were doing small black and whites and making fun of cowboys. Cowboys and Yoopers have some things in common," Buchkoe says. "My favorite one shows the front end of a pick-up truck and there are two cowboys and two hound dogs, and it says ‘Montana double date.’ Take that any way you want," he laughs.

It was an idea Buchkoe felt he could expand on with Yooper stereotypes. He and his wife Barb brainstormed ideas, took pictures and developed the ideas and then last year came out with a range of 16 cards. He often uses his friends or relatives for the pictures and then manipulates the pictures on Photoshop to represent a funny Yooper phrase. The Yooper Postcards aren’t just black and white; Buchkoe adds one color element to each card to make them slightly more eye-catching.

"There’s spot color on each one just to make it stand out and make it look a little different," Buchkoe says. "Like if you go up to the Tahquamenon Falls, there’s 50 different postcards all of Tahquamenon Falls and after a while you start going cross eyed. Then you see the black and white ... those are going to stand out among all of the thousands of scenic cards."

This year, he created an additional 12 postcards that are being sold primarily throughout the U.P. The pictures include pasties growing out of the ground, an image of a woman turned blue that pokes fun at beach culture with the phrase "Chillin’ In Lake Superior," and a collection of what could be considered the "Really Real Housewives of the U.P." He sold these cards the same way he sold the first batch a year ago. Buchkoe has a unique way of selling his cards to vendors: he visits each store personally. This way, he says, he’s able to see what his sellers prefer and what sells the best, and cultivate a good relationship with the store owner or manager.

One store that has sold his cards from the beginning and is one of the few that sells all 28 of them is Superior View in Marquette. Owner Jack Deo, who says he has been in competition with Buchkoe as a photographer for 30 years, says he sells the cards because of their creativity and uniqueness.

"He created something that represents the things that we laugh about as Yoopers. I just think they’re well done," Deo says.

Though he says some tourists who visit the store enjoy the cards, the majority of interest in the cards has come from Yoopers.

"The best audience is probably a lot of the Yoopers who can laugh at themselves. A lot of the tourists might not get those jokes, so I would think that Yoopers buy them for other people in the U.P.," Deo says.

Buchkoe hopes to make new postcards each year as long as he can come up with unique and fun ideas. Shirts and other products might be in the future, but Buchkoe plans to keep the focus on postcards. For Buchkoe, coming up with the ideas and being so involved in the selling is what makes the postcards fun.

"If I hadn’t gotten into a lot of stores and everybody had said no then it wouldn’t be any fun, then it would be like selling vacuum cleaners or something: I can’t imagine doing that," Buchkoe says. "I get a good enough response; even some of the people who didn’t sell a whole lot bought some of the new ones."

Lucy Hough is a history and journalism student at Northern Michigan University. She is also an editorial assistant at Marquette Monthly.