Abstract
Due to colonization, Hawaii’s economic, political, and societal structure were changed to fit the white American standard. Colonization also caused a shift in their aesthetics, including the exclusion from participation in the creation of art, and poor visual representations of Hawaiian culture in settler art, which is known as “settler aesthetics.” Settler Aesthetics is a term and theory that seeks to define how a culture’s art and beauty has been influenced by settler colonialism. Many historians have analyzed this theory in Hawaiian literature, music, and visual art, but have left untouched the field of deltiology; the study of postcards. Though postcards are rarely seen as art, they serve a valuable purpose in determining how a culture is presented to the world. Therefore, postcards are a window to understanding how Hawaiian aesthetic has been racialized and commodified due to settler colonialism. This project focuses on photographers and postcards and how they were used to colonize and commodify Hawaiian culture in the early 20th century.
Included in
"Taking" Photographs: Settler Aesthetics in 20th Century Hawaiian Postcards
Due to colonization, Hawaii’s economic, political, and societal structure were changed to fit the white American standard. Colonization also caused a shift in their aesthetics, including the exclusion from participation in the creation of art, and poor visual representations of Hawaiian culture in settler art, which is known as “settler aesthetics.” Settler Aesthetics is a term and theory that seeks to define how a culture’s art and beauty has been influenced by settler colonialism. Many historians have analyzed this theory in Hawaiian literature, music, and visual art, but have left untouched the field of deltiology; the study of postcards. Though postcards are rarely seen as art, they serve a valuable purpose in determining how a culture is presented to the world. Therefore, postcards are a window to understanding how Hawaiian aesthetic has been racialized and commodified due to settler colonialism. This project focuses on photographers and postcards and how they were used to colonize and commodify Hawaiian culture in the early 20th century.