Forget Stamps: A Vintage Travel Poster Can Show How the Past Viewed the World

Hanging a generic picture of a lake view or a mountain range does little to enhance the room, nor does it reflect the inhabitant’s personality. A vintage travel poster is a great timepiece from the past that reflects the era’s view of the world, travel and the increasing ability for cultures to mix.

Ads for cruise liners and luxury trains also show how people in the past traveled, before airplanes became the norm. A vintage travel poster doesn’t only depict a certain place but also a certain time and attitude.

A Sign of the Times

Posters advertising tropical destinations often show beautiful, exotic women clad in little more than a pair of coconut shells and sarongs. Ads for trips to Africa and Asia depict dark, cartoon characters, often bordering grotesque stereotype.

A vintage travel poster is an excellent way to see how people viewed cultures seen as the “Other” – like merchandise that perpetuates the Mammy figure or an old Amos & Andy broadcast. The vintage travel poster is a seemingly innocent product of its time that ends up being anything but innocent – racist, sexist and Eurocentric ideology is often dominant in travel posters showing people.

An ad for a cruise to South Africa shows an idyllic scene of beautiful white people sunning themselves on the ship’s deck – miles away from the reality of South Africa. A vintage travel poster can show the ugliness of the world, as well as its beauty.

How Did They Get Around?

Going through a vintage travel poster shop or gallery online, it’s incredible to see how different transportation was in the 1930s to the 1950s. Airplanes were available, and it’s also fun to see just how they were marketed, because commercial travel was still new.

Ads for the Orient Express hark back to another time, often idealized in films or novels. Airplane travel was exciting and fresh, as was the idea of being able to visit another continent. A great example of a vintage travel poster embodying the idea of a developing trend is Jean Carlu’s 1954 poster for Pan Am travel to Paris.

The Carlu drew not only immediate and trendy concepts seen as “Parisian” but depicted them in a modern, cubist form, stylizing the Eiffel Tower and the main figure in the picture. The theme is prevalent in many older airline ads, where (then) new imagery and concepts are paired with travel. Another example would be a 1947 vintage travel poster depicting a Swedish Airline, its logo, literally circling the globe.

The view of linking air travel with space travel may seem quaint now, but a vintage travel poster can exhibit the feelings of exhilaration, wonder and awe of a mode of transportation we now take for granted. That is the best thing about collecting things from the past – they remind us of how far we’ve gotten.