Travel Marketing and Popular Photography in Britain, 1888–1939: Reading the Travel Image
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- q19yv
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9781138503113
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- October
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This book rethinks the development of travel marketing by considering the largely overlooked role played by the democratization of photography. It does so through a longitudinal study of the previously unexplored image archive of the Polytechnic Touring Association (PTA), a London-based initially philanthropic turned commercial travel firm whose historical origins coincide with the Kodak-led emergence of popular photography in 1888. The book examines the PTA’s changing relationship with tourist photographers, and how this influenced the company’s understanding of what role photography could play in promoting the tours. Its importance lies, firstly, in how it activates the PTA’s image archive and related documents as a tool to analyse critically the company’s changing visual language. Secondly, it breaks new ground in its reappraisal of popular photography, a topic which has been largely marginalised within traditional photographic histories.
The book approaches this investigation from a perspective informed by archival research and new directions in photographic and media studies. It does so by combining a close reading of tourists’ first-hand accounts of travel and photography with the analysis of the socio-cultural conditions of possibility for the emergence, impact, and transformation of these practices. The book raises several questions concerning the influence that photographic popular culture had more generally on commercial art and culture, thus contributing not only to the history of photography but also to visual, cultural and media studies, and art history.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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