‘What does America look like?’ is a question whose answer has shifted incessantly across National Geographic’s 138-year history, from frontier landscapes and postwar prosperity to a nation tussling with its own complexities and contradictions. A new tome from Taschen meshes those perspectives together, using the magazine’s archive to survey the United States through a century of photography.
Tour the history, people, and beauty of the United States
Front cover photography by B. Anthony Stewart (1957)
On the cover, the Mayflower II – a reproduction of the 17th-century ship – enters New York Harbour in 1957, greeted by a flotilla beneath a silver US Navy airship, with the Manhattan skyline hovering in the distance. Captured by B Anthony Stewart, the brilliant photograph perfectly frames the country’s founding mythology, technological ambition and appetite for spectacle, setting the tone for the 792 pages that follow.
Nebraska, 1978. In Cherry County, the day at School 100 would begin with the raising of the flag by the school’s lone teacher and its only two students. One-room schoolhouses abounded in the vast, sparsely populated Sandhills region
Iowa, 1991. John O’Donnell Stadium in Davenport, home to the Quad Cities Angels. The club has played in the Midwest League, one of the lower rungs of the baseball ladder, since 1960. But Davenport has had minor league teams going all the way back to 1879
National Geographic. The United States of America takes shape as a substantial XL Taschen edition. Organised geographically, the title journeys alphabetically through all 50 states before turning to US territories. Each chapter opens with a quote that waxes lyrical about its destination, drawn from figures ranging from musicians and scientists to authors and poets, which is then followed by an introduction by travel writer Joe Yogerst that traces the state’s history, culture and regional identity alongside National Geographic’s own coverage.
Recurring subjects include the grandeur of the American landscape, the growth of its cities, industrial and agricultural labour, transport, leisure, religion and regional traditions – all captured through a candid, occasionally irreverent lens. Collectively, the photographs chart the country’s shift from an agricultural and industrial power towards an increasingly urban, suburban and consumer-driven society, while objectively registering the environmental damage and social tensions that accompanied its growth.
Mississippi, 1973. A young baller goes aloft for a skyhook in Jones Village, an unincorporated community in the Mississippi Delta
Louisiana, 2007. Trumpeter Kenneth Terry and the New Birth Brass Band played at Preservation Hall, two years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. ‘What we do in New Orleans you can’t find anyplace else,’ Terry told Geographic writer Joel K. Bourne Jr. ‘The jazz we play comes from the soul.’
National Geographic. The United States of America also maps the evolution of photographic technology. Early black-and-white images and Autochromes from the 1920s and 1930s give way to the saturated Kodachrome photography that came to define National Geographic’s postwar identity. During the 1970s and 1980s, staged scenes and picturesque travel imagery were increasingly joined by documentary work confronting pollution, poverty, urban decline and cultural change. Digital photography closes the century with an expansive, often ambiguous portrait of American life.
Photography editor David Walker examines this evolution in his introductory essay, ‘America the Beautiful’. He considers how the magazine’s photographers helped construct an aspirational national image rooted in exploration, prosperity and individualism, while frequently reinforcing the perspective of white, middle-class America. As its editorial priorities evolved, the archive began to accommodate a fuller and increasingly complex picture of the country – one marked by social unrest, ecological damage and regional identities threatened by economic and technological development.
Alaska, 1956. Wreathed in a penumbra of luxurious fur, the winner of the 1955 Miss Arctic Circle contest stands beneath a blue sky at the annual Fourth of July celebration in Kotzebue
South Dakota, 1930s. The face of Lincoln emerges from naked stone, carved by craftsmen clinging to Mount Rushmore. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his crew began carving the monument in 1927. It was completed in 1941 by Borglum’s aptly named son, Lincoln
The evolution can also be traced through the photographers themselves. Early figures including B Anthony Stewart, J Baylor Roberts, W Robert Moore and Willard R Culver arguably initiated the magazine’s carefully composed visual language. Later generations – among them William Albert Allard, Jodi Cobb, Nathan Benn, Jim Richardson, Cary Wolinsky and Michael Melford – introduced documentary immediacy, psychological depth and increasingly individual approaches to colour and composition.
Edited by Reuel Golden and designed by Andy Disl, the book pairs its photographs with captions by Jeff Z Klein and illustrations by Cristóbal Schmal. Its generous format allows each image to act as historical evidence, editorial construction and object of visual nostalgia. The 250th-anniversary edition revisits material first published by Taschen in 2016, presenting it anew at a moment when American identity is once again under intense examination.
Virginia, 1939. Getting some ink in Norfolk, back when sailors were tattoo parlours' best, and virtually only, customers
‘National Geographic. The United States of America’, published by Taschen, is available now, priced £125