Postcards from the edge: This collectable series parodies Montreal's tourism imagery

For anyone who's spent any time in Montreal, the postcards' images are familiar — it's the context that seems out of place. They feature trash-strewn streets, strange graffiti, piles of garbage in the snow, potholes and abandoned buildings, all accented by the word "Montreal" in a festive font and colour.

This is Montreal's dark side, the kind you won't see on the standard-issue postcards for sale in Old Montreal or at a downtown gift shop. And as parodies of tourist memorabilia go, they are pretty hilarious.

"I definitely liked the idea of playing with touristy imagery," says Brendan Birkett, the Montreal-based photographer and musician behind the series. "I liked the idea of focusing on the rougher edges of Montreal, or the more mundane parts of the city."

A B.C. native, Birkett says he first came to Montreal as part of a school trip in the late '90s. "The trip really changed me. I knew I had to come back — it's intoxicating. Being from a rural area, I had never lived in a city before, but wanted to settle here."

The idea of mock postcards came to him when a friend sent him one from England several years ago. It featured a standard shot of the Thames but with some unsightly machinery in the foreground, clearly playing up the ugliness of the scenery. "It was a very funny take on a postcard a tourist to London might buy."

Birkett says he does not mean his postcard series, which he began in 2014, to be a criticism of Montreal. "You could make a series like this about any city. In Toronto or Vancouver, you could focus on soulless condo developments. I just like the idea of playing with the choices of images people usually put on postcards."

While the series clearly focuses on the rough underbelly of the city, he says he thinks of his choices as random. "I'm a bit obsessed with photography. I tend to take pictures of everything, constantly. I love to take long walks and photograph things that intrigue me. Some of the things I photograph are a bit hideous, but they are not entirely dark."

One image has a couch in tatters, left on a Little Italy street for garbage pickup (or for passersby to take home). "The car parked next to it has no back wheel," he adds, pointing to a detail I'd missed.

Birkett says he's sold several hundred postcards since he began creating them (so far there are 25, with more to come this fall). "They sell well, especially around Christmas. But they don't seem to be that popular with out-of-towners. I think these are postcards for Montrealers, who get that they are meant in fun."

As far as a name for the series? "I thought about the Reality Postcard series, or Real Talk Postcards. But they are the postcards with no name. I think of these postcards being about admitting something you didn't want to admit to."

For more postcards "with no name," visit Birkett's Tumblr page.