An Eye For The Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque by Krista A. Thompson

Author:Krista A. Thompson [KRISTA A. THOMPSON]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DUKE
Published: 2011-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

The moment artists like Haweis visualized the sea gardens, the Development Board capitalized on these images in its promotional efforts. This is evident in a number of contemporaneous exhibitions and promotional schemes. In 1915 the board sponsored an international art exhibition of Haweis’s paintings, which focused precisely on Nassau’s submarine environments (DB 1915). Two years later the board supported and distributed a book by Haweis, Sea Gardens of Nassau (DB 1917–18). In 1924 the board used Haweis’s paintings in the Bahamas Court at the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley (NG, 12 July 1924). Haweis’s paintings accompanied a display of marine curios and fish gathered from Bahamian seas (NG, 6 October 1924). In short, the marine gardens and seascape quickly became central icons in Development Board campaigns after 1915, especially by the 1920s and 1930s. Williamson’s work provided a visual precursor to these campaigns, a means through which the marine gardens could be visualized, used in tourism promotion, and iconicized as representative of the Bahamas.

Williamson’s visual inventions also inspired physical representations of the marine gardens in hotel landscapes. As soon as seascapes became sacralized in visual representations, they informed the built environment of hotels in several ways. In 19 35 the exhibition of Williamson’s work that had been at the Chicago World’s Fair returned to Nassau and formed a display at the Hotel Colonial (NG, 8 January 1935). In this instance the exhibit, which had projected an image of the islands to international audiences, literally became a part of the hotel space for travelers when they visited Nassau. Additionally, in 1938 enlargements of Williamson’s photographs (54 x 68 inches) also formed murals in a small hotel, The Rozelda, owned by Development Board chairman, Roland Symonette (Williamson to Symonette, 10 November 1938). Hotel owners also made the marine gardens a more permanent part of their decor. In 1922 the Hotel Colonial’s managers hired Haweis to create underwater murals “portraying the many varieties of bright-coloured and interesting native fish” for the hotel’s lobby, which would surround a giant aquarium in the main entranceway (NG, 3 February 1923). In this project no longer were tourists confined to gazing at photographs or films of the sea gardens, but the aquarium reproduced the submarine environment in miniature. In a short period of just seven years between the creation of Williamson’s films and the popularity of his submarine representations, hotel owners aimed to re-create physically this environment within hotels. Much like the creation of tropical gardens on the Royal Victoria Hotel or Hotel Colonial’s grounds, hotel designers aimed to reproduce the newest photographic icon of the tropical seascape within their properties. These hotel projects demonstrate that soon after tourism promoters and travelers committed aspects of the environment to photography and reified them as iconic, industry proprietors refashioned parts of the landscape in their image.

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