American iconographic: National Geographic, global culture, and the visual imagination

In an era before affordable travel, National Geographic not only served as the firstglimpse of countless other worlds for its readers, but it helped them confront sweeping historicalchange.

There was a time when its cover, with the unmistakable yellow frame, seemed to be on everycoffee table, in every waiting room.

In American Iconographic, Stephanie L. Hawkins traces National Geographic's rise to cultural prominence, from itsfirst publication of nude photographs in 1896 to the 1950s, when the magazine's trademarkvisual and textual motifs found their way into cartoon caricature, popular novels, and film tradingon the "romance" of the magazine's distinctive visual fare.National Geographic transformed local color into global culture through itsproduction and circulation of readily identifiable cultural icons.

The adventurer-photographer,the exotic woman of color, and the intrepid explorer were part of the magazine's"institutional aesthetic," a visual and textual repertoire that drew upon popularnineteenth-century literary and cultural traditions.

This aesthetic encouraged readers toidentify themselves as members not only in an elite society but, paradoxically, as both Americansand global citizens.

More than a window on the world, National Geographic presented a window onAmerican cultural attitudes and drew forth a variety of complex responses to social and historicalchanges brought about by immigration, the Great Depression, and world war.Drawing on theNational Geographic Society's archive of readers' letters and its founders'correspondence, Hawkins reveals how the magazine's participation in the "cultureindustry" was not so straightforward as scholars have assumed.

Letters from themagazine's earliest readers offer an important intervention in this narrative of passivespectatorship, revealing how readers resisted and revised NationalGeographic's authority.

Its photographs and articles celebrated Americanself-reliance and imperialist expansion abroad, but its readers were highly aware of theserepresentational strategies, and alert to inconsistencies between the magazine's editorialvision and its photographs and text.

Hawkins also illustrates how the magazine actually encouragedreaders to question Western values and identify with those beyond the nation's borders.

Chapters devoted to the magazine's practice of photographing its photographers on assignmentand to its genre of husband-wife adventurers reveal a more enlightened NationalGeographic invested in a cosmopolitan vision of a global human family.Afascinating narrative of how a cultural institution can influence and embody public attitudes, thisbook is the definitive account of an iconic magazine's unique place in the Americanimagination.