Term Papers on Reading National Geographic

Term Paper Title	Reading National Geographic
# of Words	859
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.44

Reading National Geographic
Political Science 3835

Fall 2000

Reading National Geographic is a cultural analysis of the National Geographic magazine and the National Geographic Society that publishes the journal.

In their book Lutz and Collins claim that National Geographic magazine has a cultural authority that exceeds all other scientific magazines.  At first I wondered why it is that National Geographic is one of the primary means by which people in the US receive info and images of the world outside of their borders?  But as you read through the book you become more convinced that this is the magazine that American society identifies with.  The magazine is built in such a way that it draws attention with exotic elements of the third world.  The National Geographic wants the reader to empathize with the people living there.  And that’s what the American society does, it empathizes and it’s being drawn to the unknown, and it is possibly being influenced on its desire to travel the world and experience other cultures.

The book is focused on the photography used in National Geographic. Photographs are considered to be artifacts that provide information about the culture, society and historical contexts that produced the photos.  We are being introduced to a combination of the studies of photography and geography.

While the magazine does contain numerous articles, it has become most identified for its high-quality photographs.  National Geographic has been the benchmark of photographic quality and beauty for many years, I’m sure a job with them is the dream of any photographer.  To see how the magazine invites people to look out at the rest of the world thought the eyes of the world’s most powerful nation, the authors of the book closely analysed about six hundred photos.  In their analysis of the “other” cultures through photography, the authors also look in to social, historical, and art theories, and closely examine ethnic and gender issues. Lutz and Collins structured their study "so as to gain insight into the process by which images are formed, selected and controlled, purveyed and read" (11).  The authors claim that the photos are “scientific” in efforts to be objectively presenting evidence, "the objects presented actually occurred in nature in the ways they were photographed" (28).  But by analysing this, you come to a conclusion that for the photo to appear real and “scientific” the image must be consistent with cultural expectations.  And it’s the editors who consider under what conditions images will appear to be realistic.  While writing the book, the authors were amazed by how the looks and looking relationships are captur...

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