Postcards are not only an instrument of visual communication, they shape the image and identity of a country or city, casting its natural and cultural resources in the best light. They create dream destinations and allow us to explore an exaggerated, idealized version of a place through the eyes of the host. Following Walter Benjamin’s notion of photography as a way of exposing the optical unconscious, this project analyzed tourist’s postcards in Vancouver according to pictorial content (space and subjects) and symbols in order to describe main themes of Vancouver’s identity.
Anna
anna.hild@fu-berlin.de