A Cold War Tourist and His Camera (review)

Martha Langford and John Langford’s A Cold War Tourist and His Camera offers a unique analysis of images of Canada’s global presence during the Cold War. This study revolves around the sixteenth class year of Canada’s National Defence College as it learned about Canada’s national and international Cold War security strategies and later travelled through North America, Africa, and Europe in 1963. Asserting that ‘any photographic collection, amateur or professional, from the Cold War era can be interpreted contextually and imaginatively to shine light on the rhetoric and preoccupations of those times’ (4), Langford and Langford show that tourist photography at this time was an attempt to position the photographer and the audience within the Cold War and its surrounding landscape. Their treatment of the topic certainly confirms this view, as they reveal the intricate relationships between political climate, culture, personal vision, and slide photography.

Part of the book’s appeal lies in its approach; rather than gathering the photos of just any National Defence College participant, the authors use the slide photographs taken by their father, Warren Langford, as the basis of their study. Supplementing his 1963 slide collection are letters and postcards he wrote to his family while he travelled. This presents an opportunity to evaluate the image within its historical context and how the photos were displayed. Since the photos used in this study are slides, they were necessarily presented to other viewers – an act that Langford and Langford both remember from their childhoods and use as a fundamental piece of evidence. Consequently, they have endeavoured to organize and analyze the collection according to their father’s travel itinerary because it preserves ‘something of the photographic impulse’ (20). Important here is that the authors discuss their findings within the context of the photographer–viewer relationship, so casting the act of taking a photo as equal to its resulting image.

Although using their father’s slide and communication collections is ultimately an effective and novel approach to Cold War–era photography, there were some points of this more personal account of the Cold War experience that could have benefitted from further explanation. At times, it seemed as though a familial anecdote’s meaning had been assumed but not explained. This is not to say that Langford and Langford’s approach was not objective enough – they generally successfully present their evidence and analysis without familial bias. However, that there are still some areas that need more attention does emphasize the challenges of maintaining a balance of personal histories within broader political and cultural events.

Because of its emphasis on photography, Langford and Langford’s study is of particular interest to art, tourism, and cultural historians. However, the authors have made sure to situate their analysis within the historical context of the Cold War and so have provided detailed accounts of Canada’s foreign policies, its relations with other countries, and the international political climate. Consequently, by showing how these efforts were perceived by a ‘Cold War tourist’ and displayed to his family, this work presents a personal interpretation of Canada’s participation in the Cold War while simultaneously keeping a global perspective. The methodology employed by Langford and Langford is also commendable and quite useful to those working with photography collections or integrating photos within their research because of the authors’ attention to the process of taking and displaying slide photographs.

The quality of the book itself enhances its use for photo historians. Not only are the images carefully chosen, explained, and analyzed, they are also reproduced with the utmost care and attention to quality. The images were not cropped and they are, where possible, organized sequentially, so helping to illustrate the photographic impulse the authors incorporate within their analysis of the slide collection. In addition, the variety of photos included by the authors is partially what makes this study so important for scholars of tourism and Cold War histories because they collectively...