Travel Authenticated?: Postcards, Tourist Brochures, and Travel Photography

Abstract

The use of postcards, tourist brochures, and photographic evidence of travel by tourists is a way of justifying their journey and travel experience through visual authentication. The postcard, brochure, or photograph depicts the genuine or authentic vision of the traveler as having physically been present in the often far flung location under perusal. Both postcards and photographs, as visual media, serve to provide the traveler and, in turn, the relative or friend at home, with the proof of travel to distant and exotic places, and visual authentic verification that the traveler was actually present in the location. Tourist brochures, however, provide inducement to visit these same tourist destinations, conjuring up images of the "Other," the exotic, and the authentic.