The paradox of tourism is that even as tourists travel to physically locate themselves in a particular geographic place, upon arrival they discover that psychologically the place is experienced through the resonance of distant others and that absence as much as presence influences perception. Postcards not only advertise travel destinations and offer a personal souvenir (and validation) of one’s trip, they also reflect and shape discourse surrounding place and identity and play a significant role in the construction of tourism landscapes. The romantic aesthetic defines the picturesque, establishing combinations of scenic views incorporating hills, mountains, lakes, waterfalls, sunsets, rainbows, and similar elements. “Environment” is transformed into “landscape,” domesticating the wilderness for the tourist. The simultaneous expression of denotative and connotative elements contributes to a larger narrative of identity that encompasses presence and absence in both time and space.
This research explores the interaction of authenticity and identity by comparing postcard images composed by people who have never visited Iceland with those composed by travelers in Iceland. Landscape imagery dominates the created postcards (as it does the commercial postcards available in Iceland), but travelers utilize both visual elements and linguistic markers that express a greater emotional resonance associated with the image. The images are examined through the lens of Urry’s “tourist gaze” and MacCannell’s “second gaze.” The distinction between “representation” and “reality” is reduced in today’s media-intense postmodern world, where the audience’s awareness of both the media’s simulation and their own consumption of signification conflates the phony and the real. So too do media influences pervade the created postcards from Iceland.
About the presenterTerri Toles Patkin
Terri Toles Patkin is Professor of Communication at Eastern Connecticut State University.