The concept behind it is both simple and genius. With over 700 images from National Geographic’s archives, it’s essentially working history of American photojournalism, one state at a time.<\/p>\n
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Launched to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, it opens with with B. Anthony Stewart’s 1957 cover shot of the Mayflower II sailing into New York Harbor under an airship.<\/p>\n
It then moves across the states and decades in a sometimes bewildering array of images, captured using a range of techniques, from the autochromes and black-and-white plates of the 1920s and 1930s through the photographic film era and eventually the digital age.<\/p>\n
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Missouri, c. 1900s: Chief John Smith, a Chippewa whose tribe populated The Great Lakes and eastern Canada. Missouri\u2019s once burgeoning Native American population was displaced after Andrew Jackson\u2019s Indian Removal Act of the early 19th century. There are currently no federally recognized Native American tribes in the state. (Image credit: Lewis R. Freeman for National Geographic)<\/p>\n \n Michigan, 1944: The start of a new shia draws some of the River Rouge Plant\u2019s 150,000 Ford workers past the company docks and onto the factory floor. (Image credit: Anthony Stewart for National Geographic)<\/p>\n \n Louisiana, 2007: trumpeter Kenneth Terry and the New Birth Brass Band play at Preserva5on Hall, two years aaer the devasta5on of Hurricane Katrina. \u201cWhat we do in New Orleans you can\u2019t find anyplace else,\u201d Terry told Geographic writer Joel K. Bourne Jr. \u201cThe jazz we play comes from the soul.\u201d (Image credit: Tyrone Taylor for National Geographic)A grand sweep<\/p>\n Surfers hauling boards up M\u0101kaha Beach in 1961. A Union Carbide worker eating lunch in 1971. A New Orleans brass band performs two years after Hurricane Katrina. It all adds up to astonishing sweep of history, culture and geography that can become quite intoxicating.<\/p>\n One moment you’re looking at a black-and-white 1953 shot of a woman skiing the Rockies in a sleeveless blouse and cat-eye sunglasses, the next you settle on a speedboat threading a snaking route through Reflection Canyon. Same country, same magazine; different time, different way of seeing.<\/p>\n Clifton Adams’s 1932 shot of Philadelphians filing through an archway at City Hall has a single hanging lightbulb doing most of the compositional work. Because that’s what Adams had: one frame, one chance, no chimping the back of the camera to check your exposure.<\/p>\n Compare that with Michael Melford’s 2006 Utah canyon shot, made possible only by digital’s forgiving latitude and by the damming of the Colorado River. The technology and the landscape had both changed beyond all recognition.<\/p>\n \n 1977, New York: West 138th Street in Harlem on Memorial Day, closed to tra\ufb03c and open to the neighborhood\u2019s inhabitants. (Image credit: Leroy Woodson for National Geographic)<\/p>\n \n Florida, 1994. Punting through the Everglades in their Seminole canoes, Glen Simmons and Don Edwards note the changes over the decades. \u201cI used to see a million birds in one look,\u201d Simmons told writer Alan Mairson in the April 1994 issue. (Image credit: Chris Johns for National Geographic)<\/p>\n \n Alaska, 1956: wreathed in a penumbra of luxurious fur, the winner of the 1955 Miss Arc5c Circle contest stands beneath a blue sky at the annual Fourth of July celebra5on in Kotzebue. (Image credit: Robert Moore for National Geographic)<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: National Geographic\/Taschen)<\/p>\n To my tastes, though, the Kodachrome years \u2013 roughly the 1940s through the 1970s \u2013 are where the book really resonates. J. Baylor Roberts’s 1950 shot of a rodeo cowboy signaling “Time!” moments after a calf-roping win has the saturated, slightly hard-edged color that only that stock could deliver. I’m not saying I’m about to go out and score a vintage camera right now. But I’m certainly very tempted.<\/p>\n At almost 800 pages, packed with pictures, this extensive volume is in no way a casual read. But as a reference to how light, film stock and editorial decisions have evolved across a century of one magazine, it’s absolutely delightful.<\/p>\n National Geographic: The United States of America is published by TASCHEN<\/a>, $150 \/ \u00a3125. Hardcover, 10.6 x 14.7 in., 13.52 lb, 792 pages.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/CGFPiSYNG5K3XJrJudibT9.jpg\")
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