South African Railways Postcard Calendars, 1961 to 1984
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 66; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02582473.2014.891645
ISSN1726-1686
Autores Tópico(s)South African History and Culture
ResumoAbstractThis article focuses on a series of postcard calendars produced by the South African Railways (SAR) between 1961 and 1984. As a state-owned organisation, the SAR played a decisive role in conceptualising the metanarratives South Africa constructed of itself from 1910 onwards. This was achieved, for example, through an extensive visual archive of documentary photographs of South Africa, commissioned by the SAR. In addition to a range of 'publicity propaganda' material, from about the 1920s to 1984 the Publicity Department of the SAR intermittently produced postcards, calendars and postcard calendars as cheap and accessible promotional material. An analysis of the postcard calendars between 1961 and 1984 uncovers three thematic clusters: the natural world; the world of culture; and related to this, the world of technology, modernity and progress. In colonialist discourse, images of nature/'primitivism' were frequently offset by images that proclaimed the advantages of culture/modernity/technology, and this legacy manifests in the postcard calendars discussed in this article. The article suggests that the SAR had vested interests in how (white), middle-class South Africans imagined the country and how it was portrayed for international audiences.Key words: postcardsnational identitypropagandaSouth Africatourism Notes1. S. Hall, ed., Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997).2. Lantern was published between 1951 and 1994, whilst Panorama started in 1956 and ended in 1992. See L. Groenewald, 'Cloudless Skies Versus Vitamins of the Mind: An Argumentative Interrogation of the Visual Rhetoric of South African Panorama and Lantern Cover Designs (1949–1961)', Image & Text, 20 (2012), 50–86.3. G. Visser and C.M. Rogerson, 'Researching the South African Tourism and Development Nexus', GeoJournal, 60 (2004), 201.4. Transnet Heritage Library, Johannesburg (hereafter THL), SAR Departmental Reports Submitted in Connection with the Preparation of the General Manager's Report for 1960–1961, 18. The depiction of dual modes of transport in this image, namely road and rail, was an important trope in the manner in which the SAR was publicised, for example in the paintings by C.E. Turner for the Illustrated London News ('Rail, Road and Air Travel Through the Varied Scenery of South Africa: the Union's Splendid Coordination of Transport services', Illustrated London News, 12 October 1935).5. Y. Meyer, Information Specialist, THL, personal communication, 10 October 2012. The travel bureaux were located in, in order of founding, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, London, Lourenço Marques, East London, Port Elizabeth, Bulawayo, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Windhoek, Pietermaritzburg, and George.6. C.W. Hill, Picture Postcards (Aylesbury: Shire, 1987), 7.7. Jeffrey Meikle investigates the utopian impulse in the Curt Teich postcards produced between the 1930s and 1950s in the USA and there are a number of similarities between these postcards and the SAR postcards discussed here, both of which seem to have mediated the land(scape) for a middle-class audience: J. Meikle, 'A Paper Atlantis. Postcards, Mass Art, and the American Scene', Journal of Design History, 13, 4 (2000), 267–286.8. N. Schor, 'Cartes Postales: Representing Paris 1900', Critical Inquiry, 18, 2 (1992), 209, 211.9. H. Woody, 'International Postcards. Their History, Production, and Distribution (circa 1895 to 1915)', in C.M. Geary and V.-L. Webb, eds, Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), 14–16.10. Schor, 'Cartes Postales', 212.11. A.K.W. Atkinson, 'South African Picture Postcards', Africana Notes and News, 25, 7 (1983), 227–228.12. J. Foster, 'Land of Contrasts or Home we Have Always Known?: The SAR&H and the Imaginary Geography of White South African Nationhood, 1910–1930', Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 3 (2003), 671.13. P.C. Albers and W.R. James, 'Travel Photography: A Methodological Approach', Annals of Tourism Research, 15 (1988), 137.14. O. Löfgren, 'Wish You Were Here! Holiday Images and Picture Postcards', Ethnologia Scandinavica, 15 (1985), 91.15. G. Waitt and L. Head, 'Postcards and Frontier Mythologies: Sustaining Views of the Kimberley as Timeless', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20 (2002), 320; S. Dotterrer and G. Cranz, 'The Picture Postcard: Its Development and Role in American Urbanization', Journal of American Culture, 5, 1 (1982), 49, emphasis added.16. S. Dubin, 'Symbolic Slavery: Black Representations in Popular Culture', Social Problems, 34, 2 (1987), 129. The Internet and specifically online auction sites such as Ebay and Bid or Buy are also becoming useful archives for researchers. See D. Gifford, 'To You and Your Kin: Holiday Images from America's Postcard Phenomenon, 1907–1910' (PhD thesis, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, 2011).17. A. Pritchard and N. Morgan, 'Mythic Geographies of Representation and Identity: Contemporary Postcards of Wales', Tourism and Cultural Change, 1, 2 (2003), 120.18. Albers and James, 'Travel Photography', 140; Schor, 'Cartes Postales', 216.19. See H.G. Lynn, 'Moving Pictures: Postcards of Colonial Korea', IIAS Newsletter, 44 (2007), 8, in terms of Japan. Sallo Epstein in Johannesburg was the largest postcard publisher in southern Africa at the turn of the nineteenth century: C.M. Geary, 'Different Visions? Postcards from Africa by European and African Photographers and Sponsors', in Geary and Webb, Delivering Views, 148.20. J. Foster, Washed with Sun: Landscape and the Making of White South Africa (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 250.21. J. Foster, Washed with Sun: Landscape and the Making of White South Africa (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 202; J. Seekings, '"Not a Single White Person Should be Allowed to go Under": Swartgevaar and the Origins of South Africa's Welfare State, 1924–1929', Journal of African History, 48 (2007), 383.22. Foster, 'Land of Contrasts', 661.23. Foster, 'Land of Contrasts', 661, 663; J. Foster, 'Northward, Upward: Stories of Train Travel, and the Journey Towards White South African Nationhood, 1895–1950', Journal of Historical Geography, 31 (2005), 304, 310.24. Foster, 'Northward, Upward', 304, 310.25. Foster, Washed with Sun, 203.26. D. Bunn, 'An Unnatural State: Tourism, Water and Wildlife Photography in the Early Kruger National Park', in W. Beinart and J. McGregor, eds, Social History and African Environments (Cape Town: David Philip, 2003), 203.27. Foster, Washed with Sun, 40–42, 240–241, notes that attempts were made to gloss over the differences between whites and to establish a genealogy of South Africa as a white man's country in the early decades of the twentieth century.28. B.C. Floor, The History of National Roads in South Africa (Cape Town: CTP, 1985), 4. This growing lack of popularity of motor coach tours is reflected in the Annual Reports of the SAR in the 1970s. See also 'Answers.com' http://www.answers.com/topic/transnet#ixzz2NiGhGpe0, accessed 16 March 2013.29. Foster, 'Northward, Upward', 306. The SAR opened up the interior of the country and made it less solitary, unspoiled and empty, but also fashioned 'a new subjectivity toward the landscape that was reflexive, collective, and national [… creating a] shared white identification with the geographical place of the nation': Foster, Washed with Sun, 201, 202.30. THL, General Manager of Railways and Harbours Annual Report, 1910, 36.31. Tatlow started his career in South Africa in Natal, and became Manager of the South African Railways and Harbours Publicity Department in 1910. He was instrumental in publicising the Union for 20 years, and was particularly involved with South Africa's exhibition at the Empire Exhibition in Wembley in 1924 and in founding publicity offices in London and New York (see note 32 below): 'Railway Publicity in South Africa – Publicity Manager's Retirement', The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 5, 3 (July, 1930), 1–9.32. THL, Annual Report, 1910, 37 (emphasis added). Part of this initiative was also to 'thoroughly "bioscope" South African scenery and industries' (THL, Annual Report, 1910, 37). African Film Productions was commissioned to produce documentary films that shaped the 'emerging notion of the new South Africa' and promoted tourism: E. Sandon, 'Preserving a Heritage? South African Archive Documentary: 1910–1940', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 16, 1 (2007), 51, 54.33. THL, Annual Report, 1911, 43. This impetus was formalised at a conference organised by the Publicity Department of the SAR in November 1919 in Johannesburg at which over 50 South African delegates deliberated on ways of attracting tourists, farmers, settlers and manufacturers to South Africa: 'Making South Africa Known to Settlers and Tourists', S.A. Railways and Harbours Magazine (January 1920), 7. The Union's successful participation in the Empire Exhibitions in 1924 (Wembley), Johannesburg (1936), and Glasgow (1938) can be attributed to the role played by the SAR in the conceptualisation of the national exhibits.34. THL, Annual Report, 1915, 109.35. THL, Annual Report, 1925, 28.36. THL, Annual Report, 1925, 30–31.37. Foster, Washed with Sun, 212, 215. The SAR was the primary commissioner of images until after the Second World War: Foster, 'Land of Contrasts', 668.38. A Century of Transport (Johannesburg: Da Gama, 1960), 203.39. A Century of Transport (Johannesburg: Da Gama, 1960), 202.40. This distinction is observable in the advertising material provided for overseas periodicals such as the Illustrated London News in the 1950s and 1960s. Satour advertised South Africa as a desirable holiday destination, whereas the SAR stated that it would help with organising tickets, transport and accommodation (see Illustrated London News, 5 November and 19 November 1955, respectively, for examples).41. THL, Annual Report, 1929, 36; emphasis added.42. THL, Annual Report, 1933, 61.43. THL, Departmental Reports, 1951–1952, 14.44. THL, Annual Report, 1934, 71.45. THL, Annual Report, 1940, 101.46. THL, Annual Report, 1949, 74.47. THL, Departmental Reports, 1955–1956, 8.48. THL, Departmental Reports, 1959–1960, 15. Because of its popularity, 30,000 Centenary Calendars were reprinted as a centenary album in 1961: THL, Departmental Reports, 1960–1961, 16.49. THL, Annual Report, 1981–1982, 35. It is possible that the increasingly negative economic climate in South Africa of the early 1980s and the poor performance of the SAR necessitated the curtailment of certain promotional activities: http://www.answers.com/topic/transnet#ixzz2NiGhGpe0, accessed 16 March 2013.50. THL, Departmental Reports, 1950–1951, 9.51. THL, Departmental Reports, 1957–1958, 8.52. THL, Departmental Reports, 1949–1950, 5.53. THL, Annual Report, 1949, 14.54. A.J. Gross, 'Cars, Postcards, and Patriotism: Tourism and National Politics in the United States, 1893–1929', Pacific Coast Philology, 40, 1 (2005), 89.55. THL, Departmental Reports, 1948–1949, 10.56. THL, Annual Report, 1949, 74.57. THL, Departmental Reports, 1956–1957, 8.58. Foster, Washed with Sun, 234.59. Albers and James, 136; V. Bickford-Smith, 'Creating a City of the Tourist Imagination: The Case of Cape Town, "The Fairest Cape of them All"', Urban Studies, 46, 9 (2009), 1765.60. THL, Annual Report, 1911, 43. The illustrated articles in the South African Railway Magazine, founded in 1905, also familiarised South Africans with the scenery of their country (e.g., articles on the Drakensberg, December 1919; Hermanus, April 1920; the Cape Peninsula, March 1925).61. C.M. Rogerson and Z. Lisa, '"Shot't Left': Changing Domestic Tourism in South Africa, Urban Forum, 16, 2–3 (2005), 93.62. THL, Annual Report, 1939, 108. THL, Annual Report, 1927, 31.63. F. Ferrario, 'Emerging Leisure Market Among the South African Black Population, Tourism Management, 9, 1 (1988), 28–29; D. Cosgrove, 'Introduction to Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape', in R.Z. DeLue and J. Elkins, eds, Landscape Theory (New York: Routledge, 2008), 31.64. Rogerson and Lisa, 'Shot't Left', 93.65. THL, Departmental Reports, 1959–1960, 1.66. A. Grundlingh, 'Revisiting the "Old" South Africa: Excursions into South Africa's Tourist History Under Apartheid, 1948–1990', South African Historical Journal, 56 (2006), 105–106.67. THL, Departmental Reports, 1960–1961, 2, 7.68. THL, Departmental Reports, 1963–1964, 2.69. Grundlingh, 'Revisiting the "Old" South Africa', 110. The Annual Reports of the SAR from the late 1960s onwards devoted far less attention to the activities of the Publicity and Travel Department and totally failed to engage with or refer to the political turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s.70. C.K. Corkery and A.J. Bailey, 'Lobster is Big in Boston: Postcards, Place, Commodification, and Tourism', GeoJournal, 34, 4 (1994), 491–498 identify similar attributes: heritage; shopping; academe; tourism; night scenes; and the metanarratives of science and technology.71. Pritchard and Morgan, 'Mythic Geographies', 121.72. See Corkery and Bailey, 'Lobster is Big'; Dubin, 'Symbolic Slavery'; M. Markwick, 'Postcards from Malta. Image, Consumption, Context', Annals of Tourism Research, 28, 2 (2001); Pritchard and Morgan, 'Mythic Geographies'.73. G. Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (London: Sage, 2012), 87, 91.74. Albers and James, 'Travel Photography', 145–149; P. Raento, 'Tourism, Nation, and the Postage Stamp: Examples from Finland', Annals of Tourism Research, 36, 1 (2009), 129.75. Rose, Visual Methodologies, 86; S. Jokela and P. Raento, 'Collecting Visual Materials from Secondary Sources', in T. Rakic and D. Chambers, eds, An Introduction to Visual Research Methods in Tourism (London: Routledge, 2012), 67.76. D. Prochaska and J. Mendelson, 'Introduction', in D. Prochaska and J. Mendelson, eds, Postcards. Ephemeral Histories of Modernity (University Park, PA., Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), xi–xii.77. D. Prochaska, 'Thinking Postcards', Visual Resources, 17 (2001), 383.78. C. Rassool and L. Witz. 'South Africa: A World in One Country. Moments in International Tourist Encounters with Wildlife, the Primitive and the Modern', Cahiers d'Études Africaines, 143, 36 (1996), 336.79. Rassool and Witz.'South Africa', 364. This discourse was already apparent at the Wembley Empire Exhibition in 1924 and the Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg in 1936: J. Woodham, 'Images of Africa and Design at the British Empire Exhibitions Between the Wars', Journal of Design History, 2, 1 (1989); C. Coe, 'Histories of Empire, Nation, and City: Four Interpretations of the Empire Exhibition, Johannesburg, 1936', Folklore Forum, 32, 1/2 (2001).80. W. Van Beek. 'Approaching African Tourism: Paradigms and Paradoxes', in P. Chabal, U. Engel and L. De Haan, eds, African Alternatives (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 154, 162–163.81. D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 53–54.82. J. Nederven Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 35.83. Grundlingh, 'Revisiting', 110–111.84. See J. Carruthers, 'Dissecting the Myth: Paul Kruger and the Kruger National Park', Journal of Southern African Studies, 20, 2 (1994), 263–283. Foster (Washed with Sun, 69–71) suggests that the identification of white South Africans with wild animals was expedited by their 'erasure of indigenous human inhabitants in favour of indigenous fauna'.85. Foster, Washed with Sun, 200–201.86. Markwick, 'Postcards from Malta', 428.87. Meikle, 'A Paper Atlantis', 274.88. Foster, Washed with Sun, 227–228, 256. See also 'Native Types and Life', S.A. Railways and Harbours Magazine, December 1920, 1021–1025.89. The partial nudity of the black woman again served to establish her otherness and 'primitive' state at a time when images of nudity of white women were subject to strict state censorship.90. The trope that featured the romance of the productive land was very common in SAR 'publicity propaganda' during the 1920s that sought to attract Europeans to settle in South Africa. 'Making South Africa Known', S.A. Railways and Harbours Magazine, January 1920, 7.91. S. Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 16.92. Foster, Washed with Sun, 73–74.93. Foster, Washed with Sun, 46–47, 64.94. Foster, Washed with Sun, 40–42, 49, 86–87.95. Bickford-Smith, 'Creating a City', 1770; J. Pickles, 'Images of Landscape in South Africa with Particular Reference to Landscape Appreciation and Preferences in the Natal Drakensberg' (PhD thesis, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1978).96. Foster, 'Northward, Upward', 302–303.97. Gross, 'Cars, Postcards', 79.98. C.C. Crais, 'The Vacant Land: The Mythology of British Expansion in the Eastern Cape, South Africa', Journal of Social History, 25, 2 (1991), 257. This resonates not only with the rhetorical strategies of colonial discourse but also with the landscape vision of contemporary South African painters such as Jacob Hendrik Pierneef (1886–1957). Pierneef's 30 large landscape panels commissioned by the SAR for Park Station in Johannesburg, completed in 1930, totally erase black people from the South African landscape.99. Meikle, 'A Paper Atlantis', 273. Views from the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town were especially iconic and can be found in numerous postcards from the early years of the twentieth century even before the SAR started its visual archive.100. S. Sontag, On Photography (New York: Picador, 1973), 9, 14. This association is underscored by a travel advertisement by the SAR in 1957: 'En onthou: 'n reisiger sonder 'n kamera is soos 'n jagter sonder sy geweer. BRING U KAMERA SAAM! ('Remember, a traveller without a camera is like a hunter without his gun. BRING YOUR CAMERA! My translation): Lantern, October 1957, 6.101. For more on the manner in which landscapes were represented in SAR postcards, see J. Van Eeden, 'Surveying the "Empty Land" in Selected South African Landscape Postcards', International Journal of Tourism Research, 13, 6 (2011), 600–612.102. M. Crick, 'Representations of International Tourism in the Social Sciences: Sun, Sex, Sights, Savings, and Servility', Annual Review of Anthropology, 18 (1989), 322.103. Grundlingh, 'Revisiting', 110.104. Fashionable seaside resorts such as Sea Point and Muizenberg were linked by rail to Cape Town in order to facilitate the spending of leisure time. Foster, Washed with Sun, 210–211. Some of the earliest roads in South Africa were also built with the idea of leisure in mind. As early as 1908, the Cape Peninsula Publicity Association and the Cape Automobile Club lobbied for better roads to enable tourism around the Cape Peninsula. Work started on the All Round the Cape Peninsula Road in 1913 and it was completed in 1923: R.H. Johnston and D. Stuart-Findlay, The Motorist's Paradise: An Illustrated History of Early Motoring in and around Cape Town (Cape Town: Tandym, 2005), 50–52.105. Raento, 'Tourism, Nation', 137, 142; Löfgren, 'Wish You Were Here', 92.106. Pickles, 'Images of Landscape', 340–341.107. Pickles, 'Images of Landscape', 353.108. P. Joyce, ed., South Africa's Yesterdays (Cape Town: The Reader's Digest Association South Africa, 1981), 51.109. Markwick, 'Postcards from Malta', 419.110. Prochaska and Mendelson, 'Introduction', xiii; Corkery and Bailey, 'Lobster is Big in Boston', 492.111. Foster, Washed with Sun, 17, 58.112. M. Pretes, 'Tourism and Nationalism', Annals of Tourism Research, 30, 1 (2003), 127; N. Coetzer, 'A Common Heritage/An Appropriated History: The Cape Dutch Preservation and Revival Movement as Nation and Empire Builder', South African Journal of Art History, 22, 2 (2007), 174.113. THL, Annual Report, 1935, 76.114. Meikle, 'A Paper Atlantis', 274–275.115. Foster, Washed with Sun, 214.116. Foster, Washed with Sun, 34–36.117. Coe, 'Histories of Empire, Nation and City', 7.118. Foster, Washed with Sun, 203; Foster, 'Land of Contrasts', 661. This was particularly important in establishing modern forms of agriculture, and here the SAR again played a key role by commissioning documentary films that championed new methods and at the same time, 'promoted a modernised Afrikaner national identity': Sandon, 'Preserving a Heritage', 60.119. Foster, 'Land of Contrasts', 660.120. These images are typical of earlier SAR iconic images of trains winding their way north through the Cape mountains: Foster, 'Northward, Upward', 311, 315 note 86. See also note 4 above.121. A Century of Transport, 72.122. THL, Annual Report, 1982–1983, 23; THL, Annual Report, 1986–1987, 31.123. Albers and James, 'Travel Photography', 138, 150–151. Even though contemporary commercial postcard ranges such as those produced by Artco, Art Publishers, and Protea Colour Prints seem to have generated very similar images of South Africa, the SAR calendar postcards were different in that individual postcards could not be selected and bought.124. Schor, 'Cartes Postales', 213; Jokela and Raento, 'Collecting Visual Materials', 54, 57.125. Rassool and Witz, 'South Africa', 359.126. Foster, Washed with Sun, 39–40.127. Grundlingh, 'Revisiting', 108–109.128. Groenewald, 'Cloudless Skies', 61–62.129. South Africa has now become a destination for new kinds of tourism such as 'dark tourism' that focuses on sites where resistance to apartheid, punishment and incarceration took place: Visser and Rogerson, 'Researching the South African', 204. This has led to the rise of postcards that depict places such as Robben Island as well as formerly taboo scenes such as township life.130. Rogerson and Lisa, 'Shot't Left', 101; Ferrario, 'Emerging Leisure Market', 23–38.131. Nederven Pieterse, White on Black, 107.
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