Review: Christoph Köck (Ed.) (2001). Reisebilder. Produktion und Reproduktion touristischer Wahrnehmung [Travel Pictures. Production and Reproduction of Travel Perceptions]

Abstract

Fascination with pictures is the cultural base of the tourist journey. Pictures—in "heads," books, journey catalogs or on posters—change popular perceptions. Vacation dreams become feasible. Vacation dreams change into picture-coined consumer areas. The natives, their living spaces and life styles, are fixed as "typical." The expectations of strangers do not change only their perceptions and behavior, but also the everyday lives of those in the visited cultures. The book deals with the production, reproduction and transformation of tourist pictures. It offers a good overview of the present state of research on a more or less unrecognized topic. In four sections—entitled "Examples of tourist perception," "Production and transformation of travel pictures," "The 'authentic' in tourist pictures," and "Rituals of tourist perception"—are presented in 17 contributions, based on different methods: e.g. searching/analyzing archives and literature, analysis of mass media, personal observation. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0204116