Project Statement
Having grown up in the Midwest, I had a very idealized idea of California in my head, even before I had stepped foot on the West Coast. To me, California equaled sunshine, beaches, palm trees, and represented an escape. Growing up seeing the tourism poster of Catalina Island, it never occurred to me to ask whether it was an accurate representation. This made me curious about how they produced the visualization of California, and what was disregarded to make it happen.
The poster tells me what kind of imagined reality the airline company or tourism organization wanted me to have. However, it does not tell me anything about indigenous relocation, labor, activism, or environmental damages and changes. The paired item structure in my archive attempts to make these absences harder to ignore.
I do want to highlight that the pairings do not correct for the flaws of the archive. A photograph showing Tongva culture may challenge a tourist-targeted representation, but it may still be produced by a non-Indigenous photographer.
I chose to write in plainer language rather than using archival terms, and all images and media includes alt text. In the future, if I was to improve my archive, I would like to think deeper about language. For example, whether the Brown Berets material could appear bilingually.
There are also a number of things that I would want to explore further, such as the roles of race and class in determining who gets to be part of the California dream, as well comparing these posters to more modern tourism projects or advertisements.
The next time you see an image advertising a place, whether it be a poster from the 1930s or a modern Instagram campaign, I hope you ask yourself who made this, who it was made for, and what lies outside the frame.