ABSTRACT
The significance of visual representations of contemporary development in, for example, charity advertisements and media campaigns, is receiving increasing attention. 1 For instance, there has been much recent analysis of Fair Trade campaigning and the ideas of development represented through its advertising and marketing posters (see Goodman, 2010). However, the use of such popular images in campaigns is not wholly new but draws upon a historical legacy of popular and visual representations of development issues and concerns as well as of the relationship between consumption and development (Trentmann, 2007; see Figure 9.1 below). This chapter contributes to a historical analysis of the emergence and use of images of development in the past. More specifically, it examines how development issues were transmitted through popular visual representations of colonised people and places during the poster campaign of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) from 1926 to 1933. This campaign, in which images and texts of the British Empire overseas were depicted in posters placed on public displays in cities around the UK, signifies one of the most systematic and paradigmatic examples of a public campaign in which posters were used to visually represent and advertise development issues and through which the ideas of progress and humanity that were embodied within them were conveyed. Ships, Empire Marketing Board. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203553244/18f1d9e7-61ff-4130-a710-9bf7f8414e00/content/fig9_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (Source: Library and Archives Canada/Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce)
