ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the aesthetics of travel posters and luggage labels, that is, the visual culture encoded within travel ephemera. It focuses on two factors that shaped both tourism and tourist ephemera –the evolution of visual culture from the late eighteenth century to the fin de siecle, and the commodification of travel. The mechanical reproductions were dual advertisements, promoting both the sight and the sightseer. Advertisement ceased to be simply announcements of new titles and began to sell the products, using displays, fonts, pictures, and enticing slogans and promises. The ideal picturesque landscape, like the paintings, followed a tripartite model, including the foreground, middle distance, and far distance. The chapter provides an aesthetic, historical, and theoretical framework for discussing both travel posters, like those advertising Cook's Tours, and hotel luggage labels.
