Popular Culture Review Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2009 | Page 90

86 Popular Culture Review color writing.”15 Through Martin’s writing, American readers began to develop attitudes towards the Amish that are still widely prevalent. Readers “consumed” the Amish through her stories, but held a smug “cultural superiority” over the Amish. The publication of Sabina and other fictional stories16 on the Amish and the Pennsylvania Dutch set the commercial stage for promoting Amish-related tourism, which bolsters the economy of today’s Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. One key component of the tourist economy is the mass production of Amish postcards. Beginning in 1913, the newly developed tourist industry in the county joined enterprising local publishers in marketing several dozen postcard designs of the Amish. At this point, there was such a surge in the number and variety of postcards that over time there were more than 150 different photographs devoted to the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch. Busy postcard photographers were “catching Amish people” working on the farm, shopping at local markets, playing in the schoolyard, riding in buggies, and walking the streets of downtown Lancaster.17 Curiously, these postcards presented Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as an Amish utopia. Amish children were favorite subjects because they fed the popular perception that the Amish were simple and “innocent.”18 For instance, a typical postcard entitled Amish Children o f Lancaster County shows a close up photo of three posed Amish children. A thorough description of the children’s clothing is printed on the back: From the babies in arms to the aged grandparents, the Amish all dress “plain.” The little boy, scarcely able to toddle, is dressed just like his father. His ankle length cuffless black trousers open down both sides at the waist, where they are buttoned. The little Amish girl’s dress is just like that of her mother. It is ankle length, gathered at the waist onto the smooth fitting, long-sleeved waist.19 The card’s caption is surprisingly detailed in its evaluation of the children’s ordinary clothing as if their apparel were costumes. The photograph and truth Historically, photography has been the chosen medium to capture the truth. In The Tourist Gaze, John Urry states that, to tourists, “photography ‘seems’ to be a means of transcribing reality.”20 Indeed, the earliest photographic images were proclaimed to be “Sun Drawings” made by “The Pencil of Nature,” implying that nature herself had “drawn” the images, without any human interference.21 In 1917, the artist and photographer Paul Strand noted, “Unlike the other arts, which are really anti-photographic, objectivity is of the very essence of photography .. .”22 In retrospect, most photographs made during the 19lh century were regarded as neutral “documents.”23 Although travel drawings and etchings had existed for a long time, the clarity and supposed objectivity of the camera gave travel images a new “authenticity.” The photograph was