The Power of Photography

The National Geographic Society did not set out to test Kierkegaard’s thesis, at least not right away. Its mission was exploration, and the gray pages of its official journal did not exactly constitute a visual orgy. Years would go by before National Geographic’s explorers would begin using the camera as a tool to bring back what is now its chief source of fame: photographic stories that can alter perceptions and, at their best, change lives.

By wresting a precious particle of the world from time and space and holding it absolutely still, a great photograph can explode the totality of our world, such that we never see it quite the same again. After all, as Kierkegaard also wrote, “the truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught.”

Today photography has become a global cacophony of freeze-frames. Millions of pictures are uploaded every minute. Correspondingly, everyone is a subject, and knows it—any day now we will be adding the unguarded moment to the endangered species list. It’s on this hyper-egalitarian, quasi-Orwellian, all-too-camera-ready “terra infirma” that National Geographic’s photographers continue to stand out. Why they do so is only partly explained by the innately personal choices (which lens for which lighting for which moment) that help define a photographer’s style. Instead, the very best of their images remind us that a photograph has the power to do infinitely more than document. It can transport us to unseen worlds.

When I tell people that I work for this magazine, I see their eyes grow wide, and I know what will happen when I add, as I must: “Sorry, I’m just one of the writers.” A National Geographic photographer is the personification of worldliness, the witness to all earthly beauty, the occupant of everybody’s dream job. I’ve seen The Bridges of Madison County—I get it, I’m not bitter. But I have also frequently been thrown into the company of a National Geographic photographer at work, and what I have seen is everything to admire and nothing whatsoever to envy. If what propels them is ferocious determination to tell a story through transcendent images, what encumbers their quest is a daily litany of obstruction (excess baggage fees, inhospitable weather, a Greek chorus of “no”), interrupted now and then by disaster (broken bones, malaria, imprisonment). Away from home for many months at a time—missing birthdays, holidays, school plays—they can find themselves serving as unwelcome ambassadors in countries hostile to the West. Or sitting in a tree for a week. Or eating bugs for dinner. I might add that Einstein, who snarkily referred to photographers as lichtaffen, meaning “monkeys drawn to light,” did not live by 3 a.m. wake-up calls. Let’s not confuse nobility with glamour. What transfixes me, almost as much as their images, is my colleagues’ cheerful capacity for misery.