ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two ways of representing criminalized space within popular U.S. print culture. One of these styles is represented by the cover illustrations for two books by Hendrik de Leeuw, a once popular and largely forgotten author of travel narratives and adventure literature (Figures 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3). De Leeuw’s Cities of Sin and Sinful Cities of the Western World, rst published in the 1930s, moved in and out of the markets for semi-illicit pornography through multiple editions over a 30 year period. Sometimes the covers to these books highlighted their claim to documentary truth and usefulness. On other occasions, as with the editions shown here, cover illustrations promised access to shadowy worlds of sexual commerce described in titillating detail. These unusual images present spaces which are oneiric, exotic and sexualized, marked (most notably in Figure 8.2) by a highly stylized play with light and shadow.
