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An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque (Objects/Histories) - Hardcover
Images of Jamaica and the Bahamas as tropical paradises full of palm trees, white sandy beaches, and inviting warm water seem timeless. Surprisingly, the origins of those images can be traced back to the roots of the islands' tourism industry in the 1880s. As Krista A. Thompson explains, in the late nineteenth century, tourism promoters, backed by British colonial administrators, began to market Jamaica and the Bahamas as picturesque 'tropical' paradises. They hired photographers and artists to create carefully crafted representations, which then circulated internationally via postcards and illustrated guides and lectures. Illustrated with more than one hundred images, including many in colour, "An Eye for the Tropics" is a nuanced evaluation of the aesthetics of the 'tropicalizing images' and their effects on Jamaica and the Bahamas.Thompson describes how representations created to project an image to the outside world altered everyday life on the islands. Hoteliers imported tropical plants to make the islands look more like the images. Many prominent tourist-oriented spaces, including hotels and famous beaches, became off-limits to the islands' black populations, who were encouraged to act like the disciplined, loyal colonial subjects depicted in the pictures. Analyzing the work of specific photographers and artists who created tropical representations of Jamaica and the Bahamas between the 1880s and the 1930s, Thompson shows how their images differ from the English picturesque landscape tradition. Turning to the present, she examines how tropicalizing images are deconstructed in works by contemporary artists - including Christopher Cozier, David Bailey, and Irenee Shaw--at the same time that they remain a staple of postcolonial governments' vigorous efforts to attract tourists.
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Review:
"In An Eye for the Tropics, Krista A. Thompson's guiding preoccupation is with the construction of the Anglo-Creole Caribbean within a colonial regime of visual and discursive representation. How, she asks, was the Caribbean framed within the ocular terms of a tropical paradise as a space of verdant, quasi-primitive desire? The story she tells to answer this question is at once historically detailed and theoretically acute."--David Scott, author of Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment "Krista A. Thompson masterfully uses early-twentieth-century postcards to show how social, political, and racial issues are embedded in postcard imagery, while simultaneously analyzing current collecting practices. She makes substantial new and intriguing contributions to the understanding not simply of the historical tropicalization of the islands but of the persistence of such propagandistic attitudes in the economic survival of the islands today." --Judith Bettelheim, Professor of Art and Art History, San Francisco State University
"An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Landscape, which concentrates on Jamaica and the Bahamas, teases out the issues at stake in promotional representations of the island in the popular medium of photography (from postcards to slide projections) and underscores the connections between the visual marketing of the island and the politics of race...she consolidated her claim by surveying a wide range of visual material, dipping into local newspapers, excavating tourist board reports and conducting interviews...An Eye for the Tropics reveals some essential reflections upon the image-making machinery of tourism." --Melainie Vandenbrouck-Przybylski, Art History, Summer 2009
From the Back Cover:
"An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Landscape, which concentrates on Jamaica and the Bahamas, teases out the issues at stake in promotional representations of the island in the popular medium of photography (from postcards to slide projections) and underscores the connections between the visual marketing of the island and the politics of race...she consolidated her claim by surveying a wide range of visual material, dipping into local newspapers, excavating tourist board reports and conducting interviews...An Eye for the Tropics reveals some essential reflections upon the image-making machinery of tourism." --Melainie Vandenbrouck-Przybylski, Art History, Summer 2009
"Krista A. Thompson masterfully uses early-twentieth-century postcards to show how social, political, and racial issues are embedded in postcard imagery, while simultaneously analyzing current collecting practices. She makes substantial new and intriguing contributions to the understanding not simply of the historical tropicalization of the islands but of the persistence of such propagandistic attitudes in the economic survival of the islands today."--Judith Bettelheim, Professor of Art and Art History, San Francisco State University
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- PublisherDuke University Press
- Publication date2007
- ISBN 10 0822337517
- ISBN 13 9780822337515
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages392
- Rating
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