Picture postcards are ubiquitous, relatively inexpensive, and easily discarded. They are often looked upon, or even dismissed, as trite and cheap objects associated with the bric-a-brac of tourism. However, as this book shows, picture postcards are much more than that. They are visual artifacts that deserve scholarly attention and discussion. In fact, they may actually play an important role in the culture and politics of national identity discourse. Like novels, newspapers, magazines, film, and even comic books, postcards, too, are part of the family of print capitalism that fosters and creates national identity and identification, even if only “imagined,” as...

Israel’s leading postcard maker, based in Herzlia, is known by the company name “Palphot,” a shortened title of the fully named “Palestine Photo Rotation Company.” Palphot was founded in 1934 by Yehuda and Tova Dorfzaun and remains family-owned and -managed today. Lev Bearfield’s article about Palphot in a 1985 edition of theJerusalem Postestimated that Palphot controlled, at the time, 95 percent of the postcard market in Israel and the Occupied Territories, with about five thousand different picture postcards on sale throughout the country on any given day. A Palphot spokesperson does not dispute the high market share and...

Some Palestinian-owned souvenir and book stores in Jerusalem still carry the remaining pre-Intifada (prior to 1987) and first Intifada period (1987–1993) postcard stocks. Such postcards feature the painted and sculptured works of Palestinian artists. They are mainly published by the Iben Rushd Publishing Company, although some are published by the artists themselves or unnoted companies. These dusty and slightly bent postcards are not set out among the highly visible displays of Palphot postcards sold in these Palestinian-owned stores. Whereas the Palphot postcards are displayed, for easy viewing and selection, in racks often located outside or at the threshold of...

The presentation of the Palestinian national self as political victim can be found in the form of photographic greeting cards. Six such photographic greeting cards are for sale, along with the artists’ artworks postcards, in a Palestinian-owned Jerusalem store on the Via Dolorosa. They are not featured along with the Palphot postcards but are relegated to a back section of the store and mixed among a relatively unorganized post-and greeting card stock. This positioning has much to do with the way in which this version of the Palestinian national self is presented.

It should be recalled that in the artworks...

The presentation of the Palestinian national self is not restricted to the images of the victimized and heritage-enriched. Ziad Izzat, a photographer and maker of greeting cards, expands the possibilities of the presentation of the Palestinian national self. Through his “original photos” and “home-made” greeting cards, Izzat tries to remind his compatriots of, and hopes to show others, the natural beauty of Palestine’s flora and fauna. Izzat’s Palestine is shown to be environmentally picturesque. His animating idea is that Palestine’s natural beauty emotionally moves Palestinians, and Palestinians are naturally attached to it. He therefore presents the Palestinian national self as...

Mardo Nalbandian has been photographing Israel and the Palestinian Territories since 1952. His well-known photography shop, GARO Photo Studios, is located onṢalāḥ al-dīnStreet in East Jerusalem. Nalbandian’s photographic work is easy to find throughout the Israeli and Palestinian areas because it has often been sold to Palphot. Palphot, in turn, reproduces Nalbandian’s photographs for picture postcards, posters, and calendars, and distributes them en masse for sale.

Nowadays, Nalbandian makes his own postcards. Using his own photographs, or the photographs of his photographer brother Dikran, Nalbandian produces postcards under the name “GARO Photo” and displays them for sale in...

Earlier, two ways of categorizing the presentation of the Palestinian national self were identified in the older, but still available for purchase, artists’ artwork postcards. The first of the two categories included postcards depicting Palestinians as political victims. The second category included postcards depicting Palestinians as a people enriched by their own heritage. In Chapter 3, the analysis of Mahfouz Abu Turk’s work discussed how the presentation of the victimized Palestinian as national self has been extended into photography and greeting cards. In this chapter, the work of Maha Saca will show photographic and postcard/greeting card presentation of the second...

When Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Jim happened upon the coast of Africa in their runaway balloon, Tom was able to assess their geographical position. Without a chronometer as a navigating tool and with no control over their direction, he located their whereabouts through the resourcefulness of his visual methodologies. The protagonist of Mark Twain’s 1894 novel,Tom Sawyer Abroad, became, in a sense, “Tom Sawyer, Visual Methodologist.” And as such, he regained an idea of location and a sense of control. Lions and sand used as icons told him that below their wandering airship lay the African continent and...