Drömmen om The West
Bildanalys av företaget Swansons kataloger från 2002 och 2009
This study has been about the representation of the Swedish tourism company Swanson?s. They do trips in US and every year they do a brochure with many pictures. The objective of my study is to look how pictures help to constructs places. Its often problem with pictures because sometimes they are constructs. In this way when people look at pictures they think the destination looks like the pictures. In the brochures I want to see what it is for pictures and through that see what kind of representation Swanson?s give of US. I have done both a quantitative and a qualitative research. For do a quantitative research I count all pictures in the both brochures and place them in 25 categories. To get a comprehensive picture of the result I interview a representing from Swanson?s. I analyzed some pictures too in the both brochures, together with the academic benchmarks. The conclusion of the study is that Swanson?s gives an American feeling from the pictures and a spirit from the Wild West. Many of the pictures are pictures of cowboys, native Indians and big, magnificent nature pictures. Other pictures are things that represent US, for example the Statue of Liberty. The tourist can be fooled, because they maybe think that US are like all the pictures in Swanson?s brochures. The authenticity is important for the representation in this way. The authenticity disappears sometimes, because we all know that Indians and cowboy don?t walk on the street today in US. Today we know through TV and internet that native Indians doesn?t exist in theirs genuine clothes and in this way we can accept Swanson?s pictures and dream away.