1407
process, which provided rudimentary colored images,
made picture post cards ever more available and less
expensive. The picture postcard—mailed to friends and
family or collected as souvenir—reigned as the com-
mercially produced photographic marker of travel for
the next century (Geary and Webb). After 1885 and the
introduction of the Kodak, a unitary system of camera,
fi lm and processing that reduced the complexity of the
photographic act to “You push the button and we’ll do
the rest,” the commercial image was paralleled by the
personal, informal, traveler’s snapshot. Kodak advertis-
ing connected “Kodaking” to the modern pursuit of lei-
sure—outdoor activities such as biking and automobile
touring, and, of course, travel—and ads featured promi-
nently the Kodak woman as tourist with camera in hand
(West, 40). The personal snapshot and the commercial
picture postcard dominated travel views throughout the
twentieth century, only to be supplanted at the end of the
century by digital images posted on users’ spaces and
accessed electronically from any computer.
Photography and travel, including the transformation
of individual travel through the burgeoning tourism in-
dustry, are central and distinct elements of modern life
from the nineteenth century forward. The centrality of
these linked phenomena has been the focus of critical
analysis from a variety of theoretical positions. Analysis
of the cultural formations of travel and its associated
imagery have addressed the economic and social impli-
cations of consuming the world as image and mediated
experience (Osborne, Gregory, Taylor)The experience
of travel, the visual record of distant locations, and the
dissemination of that visual record were recognized as
important elements of the social and political structures
that reinforced imperial and/or colonial control of dis-
tant lands. Thus travel photography has been viewed
through the lens of post-colonial critiques of power and
resistance (Ryan, Nordstrom, Micklewright, Gregory).
Ryan argues that photographic practice was an essential
tool in the formation and maintenance of British impe-
rial rule. Taylor focuses on the use of photographs of
the British Isles to construct national identity through a
shared tourist experience. Gregory defi nes the produc-
tion of personal travel photographs by the amateur as
one of the central acts in the performance of touristic
explorations of the world.
In all of the critical discourse surrounding travel and
photography are cores assumptions relating to the value
of knowledge production in the nineteenth century and
the power of the photograph, by virtue of its perceived
transparency and veracity, to transmit knowledge of the
world. Prior to the advent of photography, extensive
travel was considered the ultimate source of knowledge
of the world. Travel books might offer the traveler’s
journals expanded with observations and fi eld notes, but-
tressed by research and citations from other authorities,
perhaps accompanied by reproductions of sketches and
plans, but these were partial and mediated experiences
of direct knowledge—valuable but inherently fl awed.
As Schwartz (2003) argues, the photograph became the
surrogate for the direct experience of the world, acting
as a neutral, impassive eye in distant places. Not a pale
substitute for direct experiential knowledge but a form
of knowing that offered advantages over physical travel
because it permitted careful and repetitive examination
of place, and facilitated comparison between distant
places. The assumption that photography functioned as
a technologically based system which mechanically pro-
duced direct observations of the natural world ensured
that photography wielded the intellectual power that
allowed it to operate as a tool of imperial and colonial
control, a means of structuring national identity through
shared place, the underpinning of commercial tourism,
and ensures that it continues to provide proof of experi-
ence to modern day travelers, despite our understanding
of the suspect nature of photography’s claim to truth.
Kathleen Stewart Howe
See also: Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé; von
Humboldt, Alexander; Itier, Jules; Gros, Baron
Jean-Baptiste Louis; Daguerreotype; Talbot, William
Henry Fox; Jones, Calvert Richard; Africa, North
(excluding Egypt and Palestine); Benecke, Ernst;
Calotype and Talbotype; Lemercier, Lerebours and
Bareswill; Italy; Greece; Russia; France; Egypt
and Palestine; Du Camp, Maxime; Blanquart-
Evrard, Louis-Désiré; Frith, Francis; Topographical
Photography; Expositions Universelle, Paris (1854,
1855, 1867 etc.); Underwood, Bert and Elmer; Half-
tone Printing; and Kodak.Further Reading
Faber, Paul, Anneke Groeneveld, and Hein Reedijk, Images of
the Orient: Photography and Tourism 1860–1900. Rotterdam:
Museum voor Volkenkunde, 1986.
Fabian, J. Rainer, and Hans-Christian Adam, A Vision of the Past:
Masters of Early Travel Photography, London,1983.
Geary, Christraud M., and Virginia-Lee Webb, Delivering Views:
Distant Cultures in Early Postcards, Washington and London:
Smithsonian Institute Press, 1998.
Gregory, Derek, “Emperors of the Gaze.” In Picturing Place:
Photography and the Geographical Imagination, London:
I.B.Taurus, 2003.
Hambourg, Maria Morris, “Extending the Grand Tour.” In The
Waking Dream: Photography’s First Century. New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993.
Hershkowitz, Robert, The British Photographer Abroad: The
First Thirty Years, London, 1980.
Micklewright, Nancy, Victorian Traveler in the Middle East:
The Photography and Travel Writing of Annie Lady Brassey,
London: Ashgate Pub., 2003.
Nordstrom, Alison Devine, Picturing Paradise: Colonial Pho-
tography of Samoa, 1875–1925, Daytona, Florida: Southwest
Museum of Photography, 1995.