ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the popular science monthly National Geographic, a magazine known for its ‘image-heavy’ journalism. In particular, the analysis focuses on the illustrated journalistic short-form genre Visions, which configures nothing but a large, rhetorically central image and a caption on a double-page. It lends itself to exploring the applicability of the concept of image nuclearity beyond the realms of hard news reportage – to use cases of other media and genres, and its various developmental stages. Moving from an analysis of Vision in 2015 to a diachronic study of its 2005-predecessor Visions of Earth, and from there to an investigation of Feature Articles (1985, 1995, 2005, 2015), this chapter revisits the defining characteristics of image nuclearity and the communicative conditions of its emergence. The findings suggest, among other things, the importance of an image’s compositional dominance, leading to the conclusion that a theory of image nuclearity can be fruitfully broadened under the heading of image-centricity.
