This exquisite collection is as elegant as it is timeless. The photographs in each chapter capture rare moments in nature and the lives of animals, along with defining events in the lives of people everywhere. Author Leah Bendavid-Val writes about the photographers’ achievements from technical, journalistic, and artistic perspectives.įive chapters cover core National Geographic themes-wildlife on land and water cultures in the United States and around the world and science, from astronomy to archaeology to the human senses. They share their techniques, as well as personal and colorful anecdotes about individual images and their adventures in the field-sometimes humorous, sometimes terrifying, always vividly compelling. The book showcases the skill and imagination of such notable Geographic photographers as David Doubilet, William Albert Allard, Sam Abell, Jim Stanfield, Jodi Cobb, Jim Brandenburg, David Alan Harvey, and many more. From the famous Afghan girl whose haunting green eyes stare out from the book’s cover, and her poignant story that captured the world’s interest, to award-winning photography culled from the Society’s vast archives, The Photographs offers readers an inside look at National Geographic and a sharp-eyed view of the world.

It has been used both ways in Siberia.This stunning volume was the gift book of the year when it first published, and the images that grace its pages remain iconic. At the same time it can be the most deceiving thing ever. “Photography is a wonderful mechanism for taking a look at these things because it’s such a great eyewitness. “It’s too easy to make assumptions, to just accept what seems to be the passed around version of reality,” said Leah Bendavid-Val, the exhibition’s curator. Moving forward, it shows the development of documentary realism in the 1960s and 1970s, a less ideology-driven portrayal of the realities of Siberian life, and then more recent, post-realist views of the region. Song without words: the photographs & diaries of countess Sophia Tolstoy. It continues into the 1930s, when socialist realism presented propagandist, idealistic views of happy workers developing the wild Siberian landscape.

It begins before the Russian revolution, a time when the first photographers sought to capture the traditional peoples of Siberia and their lifestyles. At the same time, it traces the history of Russian photography, whose various stages have presented Siberia in greatly different ways over the years. It covers more than 150 years of Siberian history, from the 1860s to 2011. While Western photographers have emphasized Siberia’s emptiness, the Russian photographers whose work populates the exhibition, much of which has never been shown in the West before, captures the region from a multitude of perspectives.

Leah bendavid val