Landscape in American Guides and View Books: Visual History of Touring
and Travel is vested in the American relationship to landscape and the
role guidebooks and view books played in touring and travel experiences,
including immigration. Early in the history of the republic, the
relationship to landscape turns visual, that is, landscapes inspire
artistic responses in the form of written descriptions and visual
representations. The predominant element is the scene. From the 1820s on
scenic thinking, within an emerging industrial economy, characterizes a
major cultural and social development. As immigration increases, within
the country and from abroad, publishers and trade groups create souvenir
guidebooks and view books to facilitate the movement of people, and to
encourage economic expansion and tourism. Guide and view book analysis
centers on pictures of landscape transformations and includes the
cultural basis of scenes changing from pastoral and picturesque
expressions to the documentation of managed views. The general
acceptance of managed views as replacements for romantic ones
illustrates a commitment to landscapes that denote utility and the
influence of commercial and industrial urban centers on American life.
Guidebook and view book imagery, composed of durable schemas, promotes
visual thinking across social classes and time. The primary medium for
souvenirs is the photograph, which printing methods, like
photolithography, transform into printed products. The visual history of
touring and travel is part of America's first visual culture, as well as
the social formation of landscape, the emergence of a collective vision
among souvenir producers and consumers, and the role visual information
plays in landscape commentary, which is the literary context for printed
souvenirs.
