Women of Vision

Thousands of grasses and plants were used to create Chicago City Hall's award-winning rooftop. Photo by Diane Cook & Len Jenshel/National Geographic. Copyright 2014 "Women of Vision."

Diane Cook is a landscape photographer who works collaboratively with Len Jenshel. They are regular contributors to National Geographic magazine and have covered New York's High Line, Mount St. Helens, the Na Pali Coast of Hawaii, the U.S.-Mexico border, and green roofs (above image, Chicago City Hall for their story "Up on the Roof," May 2009). Cities and companies around the globe are turning the roofs of skyscrapers into green retreats. "Green roofs are secret gardens in the sky," says Diane. "Revealing those landscapes was magical." 

 In "Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment," Diane's work and that of 10 other women photographers is featured (National Geographic Books, March 4). A selection of 150 photographs that have appeared in the magazine since 2000 were drawn from their various assignments. In addition to Diane, the photographers include Lynsey Addario, Kitra Cahana, Jodi Cobb, Carolyn Drake, Lynn Johnson, Beverly Joubert, Erika Larsen, Stephanie Sinclair, Maggie Steber, and Amy Toensing. Their stories cover a range of topics from wildlife and war to landscapes and social justice. The book accompanies an exhibition of the same name that opened at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. in October 2013, which will tour in five cities through 2016. 

A lieutenant patrols the women's barracks in Sana'a, Yemen. Photo by Stephanie Sinclair/National Geographic. Copyright 2014 "Women of Vision."

Scenes from Yemen, her decade-long project on child marriage and from Texas's polygamist families in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are among Stephanie Sinclair's images. One of National Geographic's conflict photojournalists, she's known for gaining unique access to sensitive gender and human rights issues throughout Yemen, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Ethiopia. "The worst day is not when my safety is at risk; it's when I can't get the pictures I want," says Stephanie. "You have a chance to get voices heard, so every day counts. I go in with an open mind and photograph from that viewpoint." While on assignment in Sana'a, Yemen ("Days of Reckoning," September 2012), Stephanie gained access to the women's elite counterterrorism unit, capturing a lieutenant patrolling the barracks. These women are essential in conservative cultures where men cannot frisk female suspects and they train running drills alongside the men.

 For her child marriage project, Stephanie traveled to Afghanistan, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, and Yemen ("Too Young to Wed," June 2011). Shown here is Yemeni Nujood Ali, who in 2008 got a divorce at the age of 10 after a forced marriage. Photo by Stephanie Sinclair/National Geographic. Copyright 2014 "Women of Vision."

"Women of Vision" is part of the magazine's 125th anniversary celebration and was curated (both the book and exhibition) by senior photo editor Elizabeth Krist, who had the challenging task of choosing images that best represent the broad portfolios of these 11 photographers. "To be a photo editor at National Geographic is a privilege like no other," writes Elizabeth in the curator's note. "We enter the lives of our photographers through their images. We experience their work in its rawest, freshest form, as they map out a story, frame by frame. I feel an intense gratitude to our photographers at National Geographic for opening the world to us without our having to suffer the hardships of time zone changes, malaria, hostile warlords, or excruciating temperatures. In return, we support their work from idea to publication, doing our best to help create a meaningful narrative. As we distill the images down--from as many as 65,000 frames shot, to 40 or 50 in the final show for the editor--we share the exhilaration of seeing the story begin to take shape."

A leopard's (Legadema) spotted coat provides camouflage in the dense forest of Botswana's Okavango Delta. Photo by Beverly Joubert/National Geographic. Copyright 2014 "Women of Vision."

Beverly Joubert is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, filmmaker, photographer, conservationist, and co-founder of the Big Cats Initiative. Together with Dereck Joubert, she has been documenting African wildlife for more than 30 years. Well known for their work in Botswana, they utilize film and photography to raise awareness of the importance of conservation of large predators and other key wildlife species (rhinos and elephants). In partnership with National Geographic Society, explorers-in-residence develop programs and carry out fieldwork in their respective areas of study, which leads to conservation initiatives as well as relevant stories. The Jouberts recently expanded into conservation tourism with their company Great Plains, forming community/conservation partnerships in Botswana and Kenya that aim to acquire hunting or endangered habitats and return these land tracts to nature. Beverly's image, above, for their story "Lessons of the Hunt" (April 2007) highlights the elusive nature of leopards. In Botswana's Okavango Delta, the Jouberts followed Legadema, as they called her (Setswana for "light from the sky") for nearly five years from her first days as an eight-day-old cub. "In a still photograph, you have to be able to tell the whole story and hope that the emotion and information is portrayed in that one image," says Beverly. "Each day out in the field is completely different--a uniquely new story."

A tourist's gauzy costume veils gondolas and buildings on Venice's San Marco Basin. Photo by Jodi Cobb/National Geographic. Copyright 2014 "Women of Vision."

As a former staff photographer and present freelancer for National Geographic, Jodi Cobb has worked in more than 65 countries for 30+ years, primarily in the Middle East and Asia. Her assignments have taken her to uprisings in the West Bank, into China right after it was reopened to the West and to Saudi Arabia. In 1995 she became the first photographer to document Japan's geisha and in 2003 she gained recognition for her story on 21st century slaves, about human trafficking. For her assignment "Vanishing Venice" (August 2009), Jodi covered the effects of Venetian tourism during Carnival, the declining resident population and the flooding caused by sinking foundations and rising tides. "Venice was the story that refreshed my soul," says Jodi. "It was a joy. It was about the power of the image, the pleasure of photography." 

The women photographers of National Geographic continue to tell memorable stories through their pictures, documenting the world in striking images.