National Geographic Masthead
Geoffrey Gagnon, VP, Executive Editor
Paul Martinez, VP, Creative Director
Alex Pollack, Director of Photography
Sadie Quarrier, Editorial Director for Integrated Storytelling
Alissa Swango, VP, Head of Digital & Video
Oussama Zahr, Director of Editorial Operations Features
Ben Paynter, Editorial Features Director
Amy Briggs, Senior Editorial Manager, History
Alexa McMahon, Senior Editorial Manager, Features & Special Projects
Matt Skenazy, Senior Editorial Manager, Features
Brian Kevin, Editorial Manager, Features
Eve Conant, Jennifer Leman, Nick Martin, Rose Minutaglio, Senior Editors
Alicia Russo, Creative Producer, Integrated Storytelling Digital Editorial
Katie Baker, Digital Editorial Director
Amy McKeever, Senior Digital Editorial Manager
Brian Resnick, Digital Editorial Manager
Stassa Edwards, Senior Digital Editor, Features
Sarah Gibbens, Senior Digital Editor, Science & Environment
Hannah Cheney, Kwin Mosby, Senior Digital Editors, Travel
Anne Kim-Dannibale, Senior Digital Editor, Special Projects
Helen Thompson, Senior Digital Editor, Science
Yasmine Maggio, Nicholas St. Fleur, Starlight Williams, Digital Editors
Domonique Tolliver, Digital SEO Editor
Janey Adams, Director of Digital Engagement
Francis Rivera, Manager, Digital Engagement
Setota Hailemariam, Emily Martin, Digital Producers
Jennifer Murphy, Senior Video Manager
Cosima Amelang, Video Manager
Rebekah Barlas, Zach Baumgartner, Halley Brown, Tiffany D'Emidio, Rubén Rodríguez Pérez, Veda Shastri, Senior Video Producers
Nick Garbaty, Video Producer
William O'Connor, Manager, Editorial Newsletters Photography
Breann Birkenbuel, Photography Manager, Research & Operations
Samantha Clark, Photography Manager, Digital & Short Form
Anne Farrar, Alexa Keefe, James Wellford, Photography Managers
Julie Hau, Allyson Torrisi, Senior Photo Editors
Rebecca Fudala, Crystal Henry, Allison Hess, Ian Morton, Cameron Peters, Photo Editors
Elena Sheveiko, Assistant Photo Specialist
Claire Caple, Madison Tessler, Photo Coordinators
Mark Thiessen, Manager of Photo Engineering & Studio
Tom O'Brien, Senior Photo Engineer
Rebecca Hale, Staff Photographer
Eric Flynn, Assistant Photo Engineer Special Interest Titles
Bridget E. Hamilton, Editorial Director of Special Interest Titles
Cheryl Grant-Albano, Senior Editorial Manager, Special Interest Titles
Kay Boatner, Allyson Shaw, Senior Editors, Kids & Family
Alexandra Hartnett, Senior Production Editor, Special Interest Titles
Natalie Konopinski, Senior Editor, Newsstand Special Issues
Tiara Beatty, Editor, History Magazine Creative
Andrea Nasca, Director of Design
Linda Makarov, Hannah Tak, Managing Designers
Brandon Ferrill, Senior Designer
Megan McCrink, Sandi Owatverot-Nuzzo, Designers
Madison Tran, Assistant Designer
John Tomanio, Director of Graphics
Fernando Gomez Baptista, Alberto Lucas López, Senior Artists
Diana Marques, Graphics Production Manager
Monica Serrano, Jason Treat, Senior Graphics Editors
Lucas Petrin, Elizabeth Sisk, Associate Graphics Editors
Matt Chwastyk, Senior Cartography Manager
Rosemary Wardley, Digital Cartography Manager
Christine Fellenz, Senior Cartography Editor
Scott Zillmer, Senior Cartographic Quality Control Editor
Soren Walljasper, Cartography Editor
Patricia Healy, Map & Graphic Research Editor
Claire Manibog, Director of Interactive Storytelling
Ryan Morris, Senior Interactive Storytelling Editor
Eduardo Vélez, Senior Developer, Interactive Storytelling
Courtney Beesch, Projects Editor, Interactive Storytelling
JoElla Carman, Visual Editor, Interactive Storytelling
Ben Scott, Graphics Editor, Interactive Storytelling
Michael G. Lappin, Production Manager
John Chow, Imaging Manager
Rebekah A. Cain, Manufacturing Manager
Rahsaan J. Jackson, Wendy K. Smith, Imaging Specialists Editorial Operations
Amy Kolczak, Senior Editorial Manager of Copy & International
Cindy Leitner, Senior Copy Editor
Caroline Braun, Emily Shenk Flory, Jennifer Vilaga, Copy Editors
Sylvia Espinoza, Senior Editorial Manager of Research
Michael Fry, Robin A. Palmer, Taryn L. Salinas, Heidi Schultz, Research Editors
Leigh Mitnick, International Editions Editor
Ariana Pettis, Production Editor
Elena Giardina, Editorial Coordinator
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Geographic
13 hours ago
- National Geographic
A century ago, there was a race to make the first color photos. Now there's a race to save them.
The revolutionary invention of autochromes changed photography. As those pictures decay, they're revealing a new kind of beauty. First digitized in 2008 (left), this 1937 photo of a dance performance in Mississippi was created using Dufaycolor, an early color-film product. By 2023, it had been transformed by a form of chemical deterioration known as vinegar syndrome. Photograph by J. Baylor Roberts, National Geographic Image Collection In the early 1980s, the late National Geographic Society photographer turned archivist Volkmar Wentzel was delving through storage when he stumbled onto something both breathtaking and heartbreaking: a box of delicate glass panels, most of them the size of postcards, displaying color images captured in the early 20th century. Many were deteriorating, their once crisp scenes speckled with ghostly snowflakes, obscured by halos, and otherwise rendered surreal by time and neglect. They were autochromes, the products of a turn-of-the-20th-century race to capture the world in all its color. And now the race was on to preserve them, even as time transformed them in extraordinary ways. Introduced in 1907 by French inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière, autochrome technology was revolutionary in its day, relying on a light-sensitive silver emulsion covered with a fine layer of potato starch. That powdery extract—then popular as thickener, adhesive, and fabric stiffener—was crucial to capturing the chroma of the era. Microscopic particles dyed green, orange, and violet were scattered across a plate and sealed on with varnish. When light struck the plate through a camera's open shutter, each colored granule blocked a range of wavelengths corresponding to colors of the visible spectrum, exposing the emulsion beneath to countless tiny dots of variously filtered light. Some autochromes—early 20th-century color photos on glass plates—now have freckles from oxidizing silver particles, as in this undated, unidentified landscape. Unknown Photographer, National Geographic Image Collection After a few chemical baths in a darkroom, the transparency that appeared on glass was, seen up close, a pointillistic mosaic. But pull back and shine light through the plate—covered with another glass layer, for protection—and a vivid, painterly image emerged. National Geographic magazine's first full-time editor was an autochrome champion, commissioning and procuring glass plate works from photographers around the world. Because exposure times were long, much of early color photography consists of still lifes and landscapes, but National Geographic acquired dynamic images of life as it's lived: of crowded bazaars in Albania, of masked dancers in Tibet, of riders atop brightly garbed elephants in India. Autochromes, together with similar processes involving glass plates, remained the primary means of making color photos until the 1935 debut of Kodachrome film, with its layers of emulsion that were themselves photosensitive. In the film era, the Society's glass plates were not carefully preserved. Wentzel, during more than 40 years as a National Geographic field photographer, saw value in the old photos while many of his peers were focused on innovation. When the Society thinned its collection in the 1960s, he rescued plates from the trash, taking them home for safekeeping and eventual return to the archive. Others simply moldered, forgotten, until Wentzel rediscovered them in off-site storage upon becoming the Society's first official photo archivist, in 1980. A Syrian desert patrol on camelback visits the ruins of Palmyra in a 1938 Dufaycolor. This version was scanned in 2012, before its acetate film began visibly degrading. Photograph by W. Robert Moore, National Geographic Image Collection In the past 13 years, the telltale blotch of vinegar syndrome has set in. 'Dufays' and autochromes are kept in cold storage today, which slows but doesn't halt such deterioration. Photograph by W. Robert Moore, National Geographic Image Collection Wentzel made it a mission to preserve, catalog, and exhibit the old photos, and today National Geographic's Early Color Photography Collection comprises some 13,000 plates, including one of the world's largest assemblages of autochromes (the largest is at the Musée Albert-Kahn, outside Paris). But as with many remaining early color photos, National Geographic's have been altered by light, heat, humidity, and improper handling. Plates have cracked and fissured. Oxidizing silver particles have created radiant, amoeba-shaped orange blotches. On the autochrome descendants known as Dufaycolors, violet bruises are evidence of 'vinegar syndrome,' a chemical decay affecting layers of film between glass. Named for its telltale scent and contagious from plate to plate, vinegar syndrome is 'a plague amongst photographic archives,' says Sara Manco, director of the National Geographic Society's photo and illustration archives. Degrading always sounds bad, but they're also developing, from documentary objects into a weird science-history project. Rebecca Dupont , National Geographic image archivist It all sounds rather tragic, but the blemishes also have given many of the plates a strange new beauty. No longer pristine documents of history, they've become testaments to the ravages of time: abstracted, fragmented, and obscured, like so many ancient and admired artifacts. What's more, says image archivist Rebecca Dupont, witnessing the deterioration—a process that will only ever play out once—offers lessons about the science behind these objects. 'If you think about it, photography is still a relatively new medium, only 150 years old,' Dupont says. And the objects in the collection 'haven't yet reached the end of their lives. They're in a special stage right now where we get to see what happens to them.' (These 18 autochrome photos will transport you to another era.) Exposure to humidity caused this Dufaycolor to fade and its film base to shrivel. As National Geographic archivist Sara Manco says, 'We'll never know what that image was like.' Photograph by Rudolf Balogh, National Geographic Image Collection Even as the plates continue to deteriorate, some measure of permanence has been achieved. With a 2020 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Manco and a team of archivists spent three years digitizing the entire collection. These days, the originals are carefully organized in temperature-controlled storage. Those afflicted with vinegar syndrome are sequestered, and many broken ones have been painstakingly pieced together. Despite all that care, the archivists know they can't preserve the plates forever—and they're OK with that. 'Degrading always sounds bad, but they're also developing, from documentary objects into a weird science-history project,' Dupont says. 'Are the images we're looking at being lost? Or are they just being changed into something new?' A version of this story appears in the August 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine.
New York Post
3 days ago
- New York Post
'Shark Week' and 'Sharkfest' execs reveal how sharks took over summer TV
They take a bite out of summer TV. Between Discovery's Shark Week and National Geographic's SharkFest, for decades, shark-related programming has been the apex predator dominating TV in the hot season. 'It is our Super Bowl,' Joseph Schneier, the SVP of Production and Development at Discovery, told The Post. Advertisement 9 A photo from Discovery's 'Air Jaws The Hunt for Colossus.' Discovery He added, 'It's our best week of the summer every year. It's often the highest-rated thing on cable that week. We owe a little credit to 'Jaws,' of course.' Last year, per Discovery, 25 million viewers tuned in to Shark Week. Advertisement He explained that the 1975 Steven Spielberg movie 'created this idea that sharks are super interesting, in the American consciousness.' Schneier said that shark-related programming is 'the perfect kickoff to the summer. As summertime comes along in America, people think about beaches, the ocean in general, and shark stories. Thirty-seven years ago, when we started, we were following a national trend that was already happening in local news.' 9 A photo from Shark Week's 'Dancing With Sharks.' Discovery 9 A 'SharkFest' photo of a Blue shark at night in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Maine. Photo by Brian Skerry/National Geographic Image Collection Advertisement Shark Week on Discovery kicks off this year on Sunday, July 20 (beginning at 8 p.m. ET with 'Dancing With Sharks,' hosted by former 'Dancing With the Stars' host Tom Bergeron). The inaugural Shark Week was in July 1988. 'We've been doing this for so long that the latest crop of scientists that we have all grew up watching Shark Week,' he explained. 9 A diver feeds a shark on 'Dancing With Sharks.' Discovery Advertisement 9 A photo from Nat Geo's 'Investigation Shark Attack.' NatGeo SharkFest on National Geographic started in 2012, and is currently airing with over 25 hours of shark-related programming on Nat Geo, Disney+, and Hulu. Per Nat Geo, last year's SharkFest racked up over 69 million hours of viewing (including streaming on Hulu and Disney+). Shark Week's programming also includes scientists and marine biologists, but it has more playful offerings such as 'Dancing With Sharks,' 'Great White Sex Battle,' 'Attack of the Devil Shark,' and 'Frankenshark,' while SharkFest's programming has a more educational tone. 9 A shark in 'Investigation Shark Attack.' NatGeo Shark Fest's 2025 lineup has included over 25 hours of shark-related programming, such as 'Sharks of the North,' 'Investigation Shark Attack,' 'Sharks Up Close with Bertie Gregory,' and documentary specials about 'Jaws' in honor of the movie's 50th anniversary,' such as 'Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story.' Janet Han Vissering, SVP of Development & Production at National Geographic Partners, also credited the movie 'Jaws' for the public's interest in sharks. 'I think that that movie brought out this mysterious animal and brought it front and center,' she told The Post. 'It became the next bit of a phenomenon over the last 50 years.' Advertisement 9 A diver with a shark in Discovery's 'How to Survive A Shark Attack.' Discovery She added that there are two main 'lanes' of how people feel about sharks. 'You either became somebody who was fascinated from a biological science approach…And it spurred this momentum for the area of shark biology to thrive. I talk to a lot of shark biologists who say, 'Actually, 'Jaws' spurred me to be interested in that species.'' As for the second 'lane,' of people's approach to sharks: 'There was something to be scared for, in the ocean. I think it became something that people were fascinated about. 'Is it coming after me? What's my relationship to this being?'' Advertisement 9 A grey reef shark emerges from an explosion of plankton-eating fish at Vostok Island. Photo by Enric Sala/National Geographic Image Collection She added that when people take beach vacations, the idea of the shark has become 'synonymous with summer.' Is there a rivalry between Shark Week and SharkFest? Han Vissering told The Post, 'We try to run our own race. We want to lead, and, hopefully, people chase us, rather than us chasing after anyone else. Well done on Discovery to create Shark Week. And then, we came along.' Advertisement 9 An oceanic white tip shark. Andy Mann 'We felt that there was still room for us to put together a lineup of great shark shows that had a slightly different angle, because of the access that we had with our scientists. We had a slightly different approach, and we've been thriving with that,' she shared. Schneier told The Post that because the community of people who make shark shows is small, 'we're all friends.' He added, 'We believe the audience remembers who started it all…Shark programming and Shark Week are kind of synonymous now, which is amazing.' Advertisement However, he quipped, 'In some ways, it's 'all boats rise,' to use a water pun.' Schneier said that for both Shark Week and SharkFest, 'The important thing is we're [both] telling great stories about these cool creatures, and pushing a message of ocean conservation.'
National Geographic
3 days ago
- National Geographic
National Geographic Masthead
Nathan Lump, SVP & Editor in Chief, National Geographic Geoffrey Gagnon, VP, Executive Editor Paul Martinez, VP, Creative Director Alex Pollack, Director of Photography Sadie Quarrier, Editorial Director for Integrated Storytelling Alissa Swango, VP, Head of Digital & Video Oussama Zahr, Director of Editorial Operations Features Ben Paynter, Editorial Features Director Amy Briggs, Senior Editorial Manager, History Alexa McMahon, Senior Editorial Manager, Features & Special Projects Matt Skenazy, Senior Editorial Manager, Features Brian Kevin, Editorial Manager, Features Eve Conant, Jennifer Leman, Nick Martin, Rose Minutaglio, Senior Editors Alicia Russo, Creative Producer, Integrated Storytelling Digital Editorial Katie Baker, Digital Editorial Director Amy McKeever, Senior Digital Editorial Manager Brian Resnick, Digital Editorial Manager Stassa Edwards, Senior Digital Editor, Features Sarah Gibbens, Senior Digital Editor, Science & Environment Hannah Cheney, Kwin Mosby, Senior Digital Editors, Travel Anne Kim-Dannibale, Senior Digital Editor, Special Projects Helen Thompson, Senior Digital Editor, Science Yasmine Maggio, Nicholas St. Fleur, Starlight Williams, Digital Editors Domonique Tolliver, Digital SEO Editor Janey Adams, Director of Digital Engagement Francis Rivera, Manager, Digital Engagement Setota Hailemariam, Emily Martin, Digital Producers Jennifer Murphy, Senior Video Manager Cosima Amelang, Video Manager Rebekah Barlas, Zach Baumgartner, Halley Brown, Tiffany D'Emidio, Rubén Rodríguez Pérez, Veda Shastri, Senior Video Producers Nick Garbaty, Video Producer William O'Connor, Manager, Editorial Newsletters Photography Breann Birkenbuel, Photography Manager, Research & Operations Samantha Clark, Photography Manager, Digital & Short Form Anne Farrar, Alexa Keefe, James Wellford, Photography Managers Julie Hau, Allyson Torrisi, Senior Photo Editors Rebecca Fudala, Crystal Henry, Allison Hess, Ian Morton, Cameron Peters, Photo Editors Elena Sheveiko, Assistant Photo Specialist Claire Caple, Madison Tessler, Photo Coordinators Mark Thiessen, Manager of Photo Engineering & Studio Tom O'Brien, Senior Photo Engineer Rebecca Hale, Staff Photographer Eric Flynn, Assistant Photo Engineer Special Interest Titles Bridget E. Hamilton, Editorial Director of Special Interest Titles Cheryl Grant-Albano, Senior Editorial Manager, Special Interest Titles Kay Boatner, Allyson Shaw, Senior Editors, Kids & Family Alexandra Hartnett, Senior Production Editor, Special Interest Titles Natalie Konopinski, Senior Editor, Newsstand Special Issues Tiara Beatty, Editor, History Magazine Creative Andrea Nasca, Director of Design Linda Makarov, Hannah Tak, Managing Designers Brandon Ferrill, Senior Designer Megan McCrink, Sandi Owatverot-Nuzzo, Designers Madison Tran, Assistant Designer John Tomanio, Director of Graphics Fernando Gomez Baptista, Alberto Lucas López, Senior Artists Diana Marques, Graphics Production Manager Monica Serrano, Jason Treat, Senior Graphics Editors Lucas Petrin, Elizabeth Sisk, Associate Graphics Editors Matt Chwastyk, Senior Cartography Manager Rosemary Wardley, Digital Cartography Manager Christine Fellenz, Senior Cartography Editor Scott Zillmer, Senior Cartographic Quality Control Editor Soren Walljasper, Cartography Editor Patricia Healy, Map & Graphic Research Editor Claire Manibog, Director of Interactive Storytelling Ryan Morris, Senior Interactive Storytelling Editor Eduardo Vélez, Senior Developer, Interactive Storytelling Courtney Beesch, Projects Editor, Interactive Storytelling JoElla Carman, Visual Editor, Interactive Storytelling Ben Scott, Graphics Editor, Interactive Storytelling Michael G. Lappin, Production Manager John Chow, Imaging Manager Rebekah A. Cain, Manufacturing Manager Rahsaan J. Jackson, Wendy K. Smith, Imaging Specialists Editorial Operations Amy Kolczak, Senior Editorial Manager of Copy & International Cindy Leitner, Senior Copy Editor Caroline Braun, Emily Shenk Flory, Jennifer Vilaga, Copy Editors Sylvia Espinoza, Senior Editorial Manager of Research Michael Fry, Robin A. Palmer, Taryn L. Salinas, Heidi Schultz, Research Editors Leigh Mitnick, International Editions Editor Ariana Pettis, Production Editor Elena Giardina, Editorial Coordinator
