Author Description

The six contributors to this illustrated volume show how images of Plains Indians, World's Fair cards, and portraits from Africa, the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan documented distant cultures but also reinforced Western biases by emphasizing the seemingly vast cultural differences between viewers and subjects. The authors discuss the differences between original photographs and their postcard equivalents, and they explore in detail common practices - such as artificial settings, costumes and props, colorization, and patronizing captions - that perpetuated racist, sexist, and romantic stereotypes. Drawing on anthropological, historical, and art historical analyses, contributors examine examples from both public and private collections, tracing the postcard's overlapping roles as souvenir, collectible, and popular art form.