40 KRISTA A. THOMPSON

this lack of contextual information." Many public photography archives in
the region, including the National Library of Jamaica or Department of
Archives and Public Records in the Bahamas, do not identify photographs
or postcards by their makers. If their collections are systemically organized
at all, they are classed by subject matter. The non-attribution of these images
in the archives and in publications conceals the identity of photographers
and presents the representations as collective, impartial, and transparent
visual records of the islands.
 Third, the mailing addresses and postal markings, which indelibly
document many cards' previously traveled international routes (which often
appeared on the verso of cards), are seldom reprinted in publications.
Interestingly, the postcard's authenticity, according to critic Susan Stewart,
was generally based on their being purchased in or sent from their place of
origin- they had to be materially connected in some way to this originating
locale (138). The absence of postal marks in contemporary publications
suggests that the currently perceived authenticity of the cards lay not in
their places of origin (i.e. the collections of persons in Europe and the United
States). Rather, by downplaying the former transnational origins of many
cards, the books' creators imply that the images never left home. Perhaps
these earlier routes would disrupt the "rootedness" of the postcards- their
ability to speak as objective documents about the origins and history of the
islands. The publications reinstate the postcard as "native" to the islands
and as "national" documents, when actually both the production and
consumption of the postcards were components of a multi-layered
transnational process.
 Fourth, the printed captions that originally appeared on many of the
postcards and the senders' handwritten messages have often been erased
in the republication of these materials. The books generally do not reprint
the back of the cards. By concealing the earlier personalized reading of the
cards, the postcards re-circulate without traces of its previous use, its former
interpretations. This erases the history of the cards as sites where competing
interpretations sometimes coexisted, where visual representations were
explicitly open to subjective rather than objective interpretation.
 The contemporary picture book authors' own printed comments, however,
may be viewed as a new form of handwriting, the assertion of another private
inscription on the postcard archive. The authors' own "handwriting," in this
instance the more indelible and authoritative form of the printed word, claims
possession of the postcards as evidence of their past. Unlike the singular
personal inscription of the cards by early travelers, however, the authors
strive towards a more collective reclamation of images, as is evident in the

" David Boxer's groundbreaking research in Duperly (2001), example, promises to
transform the field of research into photography and perhaps the photographic
archives in the region.