Thirty or so years ago I used to frequent a terrific antique/collectibles shop on SW 2nd Avenue (I think) called Cal’s Books and Wares. For a few years, sparked by what I found there, I collected several hundred photo postcards—actual photographs printed photographically as postcards dating from about 1905-1920.
Usually they were blank on the address side, or maybe they had been mailed and sent, but just with a few words of hello.
But here’s an exception that I really like because it is an early (c.1910) example of photography criticism (and an example of how we all do art criticism from time to time):
Dear Cousin:- I am up home now and Daisy took my picture. She says it looks just like me. But my hair is punched up on one side and my hand is shaded so it looks just like a claw. Then I look so sad and Jewish, but I look Jewish anyway. I’m a great big girl now and I don’t expect you would know me. I’m big enough so if I pass the teachers exam in the spring I am going to teach school next year.
What did you get for Christmas? I got a whole lot of nice things among which was just a dandy emerald set ring.
Daisy is just doing things with her camera. If you were here I just know she would take your picture.
Bess.
Paul Sutinen 
Thanks for sharing your “find” from Cal’s! Cal’s Books & Wares was located on SW 1st Ave. next to Paddy’s Bar & Grill which is at the corner of S.W. Yamhill. My wife’s twin sister lives in Portland, she first took us there in the early 1980s and we always made a point to go there whenever we went to Portland (we live in Austin, TX). I, too, collect postcards and always found some great cards there, not to mention books and the odd curiosity that would fit into a suitcase for the flight back home. Don’t know if his daughter, Dana, is still “in the business” but certainly miss the adventure of scouring the nooks and crannies of that wonderful old-school antique shop. Great people.