The Tibetan struggle for sovereignty is a story often sung. It's hard not to sympathize with a cause headed by the lovable Dalai Lama. But there is a story in December's National Geographic magazine about a contemporaneous struggle for survival in China: that of the Uighur people, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group in Central Asia. Photographs by Carolyn Drake bring this previously marginalized story into the fold.
The history of the Uighur people, who now live mostly in China's northwestern Xinjiang region, is incredibly vast and rich. A sort of buffer between Europe and China, the Xinjiang region has historically been a hub for trade and travel, but it has also benefited from its remote and sometimes inhospitable location: It has, until recently, retained a cultural identity. In recent years, though, the Chinese government has come to recognize the valuable resources indigenous to Xinjiang, which contains 40 percent of China's coal reserves -- more than a fifth of its natural gas, as well as gold and mineral deposits.
It's been a hot zone for development -- and thus a region of escalating violence and unrest. As the Uighur struggle to preserve their culture, they are also, in some cases, forced to modernize. Learn more about the Uighur people and their situation by reading the full article and viewing more photos on ngm.com.
The winners from National Geographic's International Photography Contest will be announced in early December, but viewers have been voting on their favorites for the past few weeks. Here's a selection of a "viewer's choice" photographs. You can see more, or even vote yourself, at the contest page.
There's a crazy landform in Madagascar called a tsingy, which, euphemistically translated from Malagasy, means "where one cannot walk barefoot." It's basically a treacherous forest of limestone spires that could impale anything, and cut straight through ropes and harnesses. It's one of the few places on Earth that, because of its remote location and dangerous landscape, has remained relatively unexplored. And it took National Geographic photographer Stephen Alvarez five days to reach it to shoot the story "Stone Forest" in November's magazine.
Alvarez, like many other National Geographic photographers, is known for photographing extreme, remote places. Much of his time is spent beneath the Earth's surface, exploring some of the most majestic cave systems on the planet. For this story, though, he spent his time above the ground. Way above the ground.
At a recent National Geographic event, Alvarez described the process of moving around this tsingy. He compared it to walking through New York City -- but instead of using the sidewalks, it's like climbing up one side of a building, then back down the other side, over and over again. "We were lucky to cover half a mile a day," Neil Shea writes in the magazine article.
This stone labyrinth, Shea describes, is a type of karst system, formed by porous limestone dissolved by water over time. "The exact processes that carved such an otherworldly stonescape," he writes, "are complex and rare." Only a few landforms like this exist in the world. And, surprisingly, this seemingly inhospitable place is home to rare plants and wildlife still being discovered -- such as the white-furred Decken's sifaka lemur. Fortunately, photographers like Alvarez can do the legwork to bring these surreal, remote landscapes to us with beautiful pictures.
To learn more, check out the article and photos on ngm.com, and view more work by Alvarez on his Web site.
Today on All Things Considered, host Melissa Block speaks with National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen about his new book, Polar Obsession. Listen here.
How many people can say with nonchalance, "I've had good friends of mine ... eaten by grizzly bears"? Paul Nicklen can, for one. He's a National Geographic photographer who was raised in Canada's Arctic and has spent the past 20 years documenting extreme polar regions.
Nicklen blends in with the surroundings during a whiteout in East Svalbard
Nicklen had a unique childhood. He grew up in a small and remote Inuit community on Baffin Island with no radio, no TV and no telephone. His idea of fun included lying in blizzards until his body went numb, building sleds and tending pet seals. It was a secluded youth -- and to anyone else, a bit extreme. But to Nicklen, it was as idyllic as childhood gets. "I was taking care of dog teams by the time I was 5," he tells NPR's Melissa Block. "It's just a completely different world, and ... I fell in love with it."
So it makes sense that his idea of fun today includes many of the same things: extreme temperatures, exploration and animal friendships. After a brief stint at the University of Victoria to earn a biology degree, Nicklen made a prompt return to Canada's Arctic, where he began a career as a nature photojournalist. "As I got to be older, as a biologist and photojournalist," he says, "I realized that these are the tools I can now use to protect the place that I fell in love with as a kid."
It's not an easy job. "In pursuit of the photographs I've taken over the past 20 years," he writes in the book's introduction, "I've crashed my ultra light airplane, fallen through the sea ice ... and suffered frostbite... I've also become lost in blizzards and been bitten by fur seals and elephant seals, charged by a grizzly bear, sniffed through the thin fabric of a tent by a polar bear."
All in a day's work. To Nicklen, though, it's worth the risk. "How are people supposed to care about the environment when they're living in a cement jungle?" he wonders in the interview. To make them care, he goes to extremes. Nicklen is on a mission to bring these remote habitats to those of us who may never see them, to make us care about the endangered polar ecosystems and the animals that inhabit them. His photos appear in a new book, Polar Obsession, published by National Geographic.
National Geographic's International Photography Contest has come to a close, and winners will be announced in early December. Here's a selection of a few submissions, but you can view more on ngm.com, or check out some winners from the past.
Photographer Pam Spaulding took the concept of the long-term assignment to an extreme -- spending more than 30 years photographing the McGarvey family of Anchorage, Ky.
Working for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Spaulding originally planned to photograph the young John and Judy McGarvey for a year after the birth of their first child, thinking the project about new parents would end after the newspaper published the images. But after that first year, Judy McGarvey didn't realize the project was over -- so she kept calling, and Spaulding kept going back. The project grew to span the growth of their three children, David, Morgan and Sara, as well the important moments, both joyful and frustrating, of the family over the years.
'An American Family: Three Decades with the McGarveys'
At a recent lecture at the National Geographic Society in Washington, Spaulding presented work from her new book, An American Family: Three Decades with the McGarveys. Quiet and soft-spoken, Spaulding was holding back tears as the first slide graced the screen. She wasn't the only one. Audible sniffles filled the room as Spaulding showed the audience images of a young Judy McGarvey learning to mother newborn David, of father John snuggling with a distraught Morgan, and of daughter Sara buying her high school prom dress.
The images of the McGarveys elicited such emotion because by compacting 30 years into an hour presentation, Spaulding underscored the fragility of life, the importance of family, the joy in the small moments, and how quickly it can all pass by.
"I was in no hurry, I didn't care, I didn't expect it to be published," she said when reached later by phone. "I wouldn't have kept going back if it didn't meet some need, personally and professionally. This work gave meaning to my photography, and when you have that, you can always keep going."
After the lecture, the whole McGarvey family, minus David, took the stage to answer questions from National Geographic photographer Sam Abell, who had inspired Spaulding to keep shooting the project even after her original one-year assignment was over. When he asked the family members what it was like to have a photographer shooting them constantly, one theme emerged -- because Spaulding had been around since their birth, the kids never thought it was odd that she was always there. She had simply become part of the family.
"On a personal level the McGarveys have meant so much to me," said Spaulding. "Judy is a great mother, and by observing her, I learned how to be a great mother as well. I saw that they did things just for fun, and that was a pretty foreign idea to me because all I grew up knowing how to do was work."
Adding to the emotion of the evening, Spaulding's own daughters Alicia and Lauren surprised their mother by driving from Kentucky for the lecture. It was the first time they had seen the scope of her work, and realized how close their mother was to the McGarveys.
"I was afraid that no one would be interested in a family of people who were normal," she said. "We see so many dysfunctional families, but there are a lot of successful families out there too."
Spaulding's images seem to reflect her personality -- the photographs are not flashy or sensational, she doesn't use any tricks. Instead, the moments are subtle and quiet, calm and beautiful, reflecting the classic moments of an American family. We see the kids' birthdays, from their first to their 21st. We see them in school plays, on vacation, and saying goodbye to the family dog. But mostly what we see is life unfolding, quietly, gracefully, one moment at a time.
An American Family by Pam Spaulding/National Geographic
Can't decide what to dress your pet as for Halloween? How about a mummy? An article in the November issue of National Geographic magazine shows that animal mummies were all the rage in ancient Egypt.
Among the many things that would be taken to the grave in ancient Egypt were pets and sacred animals. Some even had shrines of their own. That way, the deceased could be joined by their beloved in the afterlife. Over the past two centuries, archaeologists have uncovered thousands of animal mummies, and through them learned a great deal about Egyptian culture. Learn more by reading the article, and view more photos on ngm.com.
National Geographic's International Photography Contest will be coming to a close a week from Saturday, and winners will be announced in early December. Here's a selection of some submissions from this past week, from an aerial interstate view to a coyote literally frozen solid. Enter your photos at ngm.com, or view some winners from the past.
Johnny Cash gives the camera "the bird." John Lennon sports a New York City tank top on a high-rise rooftop. Kurt Cobain clutches his hair and weeps backstage. On the album cover of London Calling, Paul Simonon of the Clash famously raises his guitar on stage to smash it. These are the iconic photographs that have created our vision of rock 'n' roll. We know the rockers, but who took the photos?
Jim Marshall, Bob Gruen, Ian Tilton and Pennie Smith are their names, respectively. They are four of more than a hundred photographers featured in a new book: Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History 1955-Present. From a gyrating Elvis in 1955 right up to the big-haired Amy Winehouse -- from early pop rock to the British Invasion, from punk to New Wave -- the book covers not only some of the most iconic rock moments, but also the stories behind them.
The musical genre has evolved dramatically since Elvis, and so has the photographic genre. In the beginning, there were very few "rock photographers." And the few that existed had no problem getting into shows and photographing throughout the entire performance. Nowadays, a photographer is lucky to get in, and even luckier to be able to shoot during more than one song. Tilton explained in an e-mail:
When I was taking live pictures at big gigs in the '80s and early '90s, we were able to photograph the whole set. Then in the mid-90s, someone said, "You can do the first 3 songs only." ... Now the first 3 songs are useless -- the band hasn't gotten into their stride; they aren't even sweating! And that's what great live rock 'n' roll photography is all about: atmosphere and sweat and the band getting "lost in music." That's never gonna be at the beginning of a set. It's always near the end! Do you think I would have gotten those classic photos of Kurt Cobain smashing his guitar in the first 3 numbers?
Written by photographic historian Gail Buckland, the book is one of the first to tell the story of rock 'n' roll with an emphasis on those who fashioned its image. What would rock be without that photo of the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, or of Elton John doing a handstand on his piano? Photography didn't create rock, but it certainly helped create our vision of it.
The photos will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum in New York from Oct. 30 through Jan. 31.
James Nachtwey is in a league of his own. If you haven't heard of him, you've probably at least seen his work. It's been in local papers, national papers, Time and National Geographic magazine and has won numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal (five times). He's a war and conflict photographer, and his images can be paradoxical: They're beautiful, but often really hard to look at. Some of them appear in the October issue of National Geographic, to tell the story of Islam in Indonesia.
Of the 240 million people inhabiting the 17,000 islands, 86 percent are Muslim -- making Indonesia the most populous Muslim country in the world. And the face of Islam is as diverse as the country is populated. From violent extremists to practitioners of a more tolerant "Smiling Islam," the citizens of Indonesia are slowly adjusting to a democratization process that began about 10 years ago, after the fall of the authoritarian President Suharto.
Things are still uncertain, and the question of Islam's rapport with democracy is still on the table. Nachtwey's photos in National Geographic's October issue show the various incarnations of life in Indonesia, and the article is an approachable introduction to a culture that is both predominantly Muslim and richly complex.
View more of Nachtwey's work on his Web site, or check out this TED talk in which he accepts an award and discusses his career.
National Geographic's International Photography Contest will be coming to a close in about two weeks, on Oct. 31, and winners will be announced in early December. Here's a selection of some submissions from this past week, ranging geographically from California to India to Namibia. Enter your photos at ngm.com, or view some winners from the past.
95 percent of Libya is desert. The southwestern region, called Fezzan, is the heart of the Sahara and almost entirely inhospitable. Although ancient tribes inhabited this area, especially during more lush seasons, the harsh winds, oppressive sunlight and freezing nights make it no place for the faint of heart. In the October issue of National Geographic magazine, photographer George Steinmetz used an ultralight paraglider to show this region of the Sahara as it's never been seen before.
National Geographic's International Photography Contest has been running since late August and has attracted some pretty amazing submissions from both professional and amateur photographers. It will be coming to a close on Oct. 31, 2009, and winners will be announced in early December. Here's a selection of some submissions from this past week. Enter your photos at ngm.com, or view some winners from the past.
As far as photo editing goes, this was a serious challenge. National Geographic just released a new book featuring 500 pages of their best photography, which had to be whittled down to a mere nine photos for The Picture Show. That's nothing, though. The real challenge was for National Geographic editors, who had to dig through 11.5 million photos spanning the 120 years of their photographic history.
Book cover photo by Michael Nichols/National Geographic
Page after page, National Geographic Image Collection offers both iconic and never-before-seen photography, from the earliest days of glass plate autochromes to contemporary digital images from outer space. To coincide with the book's publication, an exhibition of nearly 90 images from the book will be on display at National Geographic in Washington, D.C., through April 12, 2010.
Only a few more weeks remain in National Geographic's International Photography Contest. Photos can be submitted between now and Oct. 31, 2009, and winners will be announced in early December. Here's a selection of some submissions from this past week. Enter your photos at ngm.com, or check out these cool jigsaw puzzles they've made from submitted photos.
National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols is one of the world's foremost wildlife photographers. But he recently said that he'd happily spend the rest of his life photographing trees. Of course, the folks over at National Geographic would almost certainly never hear of it. Nichols' newfound love developed after a serious, yearlong relationship with redwoods.
At least 1,500 years old, this 300-foot giant in California's Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park has the most complex crown ever mapped. (Michael Nichols/National Geographic)
National Geographic sent Nichols to spend an entire year in California's redwood forest. His mission was to capture the majesty of some of the tallest trees on Earth, some of which date back before Christ. And if you've ever photographed in a forest, you'll understand the challenge this presented. There's no capturing the awe one feels before these monoliths that measure, in some cases, upward of 300 feet.
In a recent lecture at National Geographic in Washington, D.C., Nichols described his frustrations. Eventually, though, he devised a way to do redwoods justice. It involved three cameras, a team of scientists, a robotic dolly, a gyroscope, an 83-photo composite and a lot of patience. (And, OK, maybe it's not the Biggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever -- but it's the biggest one I've ever seen.) Here's how they did it:
The photograph appears as a huge foldout in the the October issue of National Geographic magazine, which hits newsstands today and is definitely worth reading. The magazine, with the help of the Wildlife Conservation Society and Save The Redwoods League, also sent explorer-in-residence Mike Fay on a transect from the southernmost redwood in Big Sur to the northernmost tree near Oregon's Chetco River. It took him and his hiking partner, Lindsey Holm, more than a year of non-stop hiking to complete the trek of more than 2,000 miles. It also took three pairs of shoes.
Redwoods have been heavily forested over the past few decades and are only just now beginning to replenish in numbers. With the enormous collection of data compiled by Fay and other conservationists, we now know more than ever about this thin stretch of ancient forest along the California coast. To learn more, check out the extensive coverage on ngm.com.
National Geographic's International Photography Contest continues to draw thousands of photos from users around the world, and the submissions are anything but amateurish. Photos can be submitted between now and Oct. 31, 2009 and winners will be announced in early December. Here's a selection of some submissions from this past week. Enter your photos at ngm.com, or download some of the popular images as wallpaper.
This is one of those examples of pictures being worth more than words. How can words do justice to a photojournalist who has worked in more than 75 countries and covered every presidential election since 1976, the Summer Olympics since 1984, the Vietnam War, Bob Marley, the aftermath of Katrina and, most famously, the Iranian Revolution of 1979?
In the winter of 1979, David Burnett found himself in a unique position. He was one of the few Western journalists to remain in Iran during the throes of revolution -- to witness and report live the historic overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's corrupt monarchy, and its replacement with the modern world's first Islamic republic, under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Over the course of those 44 consecutive days that shocked the world, Burnett photographed the initial uprisings that culminated in mass demonstrations, violence and mourning. He also captured the celebrations of revolutionary Shiites upon the fall of a monarch. At the time, Burnett's photographs were featured extensively in Time magazine. And now, 30 years after the event, many of the photos can be found in one place: the new book 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World, published by National Geographic.
The photographs have an eerie resonance in light of Iran's recent demonstrations. They also have a certain eloquence that can't be translated in copy -- although Christiane Amanpour's foreward, John Kifner's introduction and Burnett's narration certainly help. View more of Burnett's work on his Web site.
Every year, National Geographic's International Photography Contest draws thousands of photos from users around the world. Winners will be entered into the Worldwide International Photography Contest. You can submit up to six photos in three categories -- People, Places and Nature -- between now and Oct. 31, 2009. Winners will be announced in early December. Here's a selection of some recent submissions. Enter your photos at ngm.com, or just vote for other photographs.
The magazine has been around for a long time. Since 1888, actually -- way back when photography was still in its infancy. As the medium continued to improve, so did photojournalism, resulting in the cachet of that little yellow rectangle. Perhaps National Geographic is feeling wistful in its old age: It has recently decided to not only dust off some treasures from its vaults but also -- for the first time -- offer a limited series of photographs and illustrations for purchase.
New York's Steven Kasher Gallery will be hosting an exhibition of the prints, titled "The World in Black and White: Vintage Prints from the National Geographic Archive." It is the first of four exhibitions coordinated by National Geographic and Steven Kasher Gallery, in an attempt to share the archival history contained in National Geographic's Image Collection -- a reservoir of over 10 million photographs, of which fewer than 2 percent have been published.
The Dome Room, Carlsbad Cavern National Monument, New Mexico, 1924. (Ray V. Davis/National Geographic Society/Steven Kasher Gallery)
Iron Hoop Cave, 2009. (Stephen Alvarez/National Geographic)
For one month beginning Thursday, 150 unique black-and-whites by more than a dozen photographers from the society's earliest days will be on display. There are photographs of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica (a conquest for the British Empire ending in the death of an entire crew). A photograph of Carlsbad Cavern National Monument in New Mexico, taken in 1924, shows the early days of cave photography continued today by National Geographic photographers like Stephen Alvarez. Photographs from all over the world illustrate a congenital dedication to exploration and discovery.
This initial exhibition is merely a preview of the National Geographic Society's vast reserves. Stay tuned for more exhibitions in the coming year.
Way out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, somewhere between Antarctica and Africa, wildlife photographer Stefano Unterthiner forged his way up a volcanic ridge and, when he finally reached the summit, stared out at the sea. Strangely, the sea appeared to be white and black, and spotted with orange -- it also appeared to be waddling. Unterthiner was staring at the sea of king penguins gathered on Possession Island in the Crozet archipelago -- tens of thousands of them ready for mating season. His photos appear in National Geographic's September story, "Every Bird a King."
Penguins are known as being "serially monogamist." Mating pairs remain together at least until their young are self-sufficient. Unterthiner is something of a monogamist as well: When he chooses to tell an animal's story, he stays with them for an extended period of time. A relatively new member of the International League of Conservation Photographers, he has authored five wildlife books, although this is his first appearance in National Geographic.
17th-century explorer Henry Hudson had a real knack for making his crew miserable. Among numerous failed attempts to find an all-water passage to Asia, Hudson somewhat accidentally explored what is now Manhattan -- exactly this time of year, 400 years ago. Little did his mutinous crew know, this lush landscape would become a global epicenter. It goes without saying that, were they to stumble upon it again today, they would find it slightly altered.
Although Hudson could never see today's Manhattan, we can now get an idea of what he saw that September of 1609 -- thanks to The Mannahatta Project, the brainchild of ecologist Eric Sanderson. His project, featured in National Geographic's September issue, shows New York like we've never seen it before: rural enough to make any Manhattanite shudder.
The project began when Sanderson came across a topographical map of the region dating to around 1782. The hills and ponds piqued his curiosity, so he matched that map with one from today to see what exactly preceded the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, etc. Artists Markley Boyer and Philip Straub re-created the old New York to contrast with Robert Clark's contemporary photographs. The result: a before and after spanning nearly half a millennium.
Most photographers in Venice wield small point-and-shoot cameras and attempt to capture something like a postcard city. It's the Venice of dreams rather than the sinking, struggling Venice that exists today. But National Geographic Photographer Jodi Cobb went to Venice with a different mission: to show it as it is -- beautiful, yes, but also sad and suffering. Her photos appear in the August issue: "Vanishing Venice."
Cobb has traveled the world to document places and people. She was the first woman to win the White House News Photographer of the Year award (in 1985). She was one of the first to document intimately the lives of Japanese geishas, and to photograph in China after it was reopened to the West. Compared to her other assignments, Venice, probably one of the most photographed cities in the world, must have seemed like old news.
But there's definitely a story to tell there. Venice, which indeed has a longstanding tradition of tourism, has in recent years faced an identity crisis. As acqua alta, or high tide, causes irreversible infrastructural damage, the cost of maintenance is almost unsustainable. One funding solution has been to open the flood gates to the tide of tourism. It's a mainstay for the Venetian economy, but also a curse for Venice locals. The population has diminished remarkably in the past few decades. Will there still be a Venice in 50 years? Or will it merely be a drowning museum?
Cobb's photos show us the Venice rarely seen in guidebooks. View more of her photos and read the story here. Also check out an interactive map of Venetian flood patterns.
"The rain forest is really messy," says photographer Christian Ziegler. Armed with a camera and a headlamp, he would plunge into the wilds of Panama at night, foraging for what look like sticks and leaves. But when the sticks started crawling and the leaves walked up branches or hopped about the forest floor, Ziegler knew to raise his camera.
No, it's not magic, it's mimicry. Ziegler, first a tropical ecologist, then a photographer, was working on a story for the August issue of National Geographic magazine. "The Art of Deception" is a tale of evolutionary marvels: insects and creatures so well adapted to blend in with their surroundings that they practically disappear during the day.
National Geographic provided The Picture Show with desaturated images to show these creatures in relief. Click through the gallery to see them emerge from hiding. Learn more about mimicry behavior from the photographer in this National Geographic interactive.
Somehow it's already August! That means much of the summer has passed, and soon we'll be retiring our swimsuits and preparing for fall. In America, this is also the season for state fairs: wonderfully gluttonous gatherings where fried foods, centrifugal force and prized livestock reign supreme. In the most recent issue of National Geographic, A Prairie Home Companion's Garrison Keillor writes an ode to the state fair, accompanied by Joel Sartore's photography. Hear Keillor discuss it on Talk of the Nation.
With dry humor Keillor describes that strange love/hate relationship so many of us have with these festive affairs. We're seduced by the food, the crowds, the rides, the carnival culture in general. And, oddly enough, those are the same things that leave us feeling sick and exhausted by the end of the day.
Sartore, best known as a wildlife photographer, was seduced by the fair as well -- probably by the same observational inklings that routinely land him in the wild. Fairs are, after all, a breeding ground for odd and visually interesting behavior. Livestock and look-alike competitions, the whirring lights of roller coasters at night, "carnies" performing tricks and feats -- Sartore's photographs take us on a tour of the distinctly American adventure that is a state fair.
To view more photos, and to read Keillor's article, check out ngm.com. Also take a look at this gallery of user-submitted fair photos.
Imagine attaching yourself to a rope and plunging down a 437-foot shaft into a pitch black pit. A "room" so dark you can't even see your hand in front of your face, and so immense that your friends can't hear you, even if you shout. Imagine trying to coordinate four other people dangling from walls to ignite magnesium flash powder (i.e. explosives) at the exact same moment so that for one split second, the space is brilliantly illuminated -- like a burst of lightning -- just long enough for you to click the shutter and say, "Got it!"
Stephen Alvarez does this sort of thing for a living. He's a National Geographic photographer, expert spelunker and, incidentally, a pyrotechnician. And he knows dedication. Each of his photographs, he says, can consume up to three days of his life. And in the end, only a few of them are published. Alvarez spent nearly 50 days in the field for a story in the June issue of National Geographic magazine, for example. The writer of the story spent about five.
But Alvarez really has something going for him: he's one of the few people in the world with the expertise for this rare genre of adventure photography. He's been all over the world photographing not only the most complex cave systems, but also all "places that haven't been cut down yet," as he puts it. This recent National Geographic story took him through the deep South: the caves of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia -- commonly known to cavers as the TAG system.
"It is uncharted territory," says Alvarez. "If you want to do original physical exploration, you don't have a lot of choices. You can go to the deep ocean, which is prohibitively expensive. All the mountains have been climbed; the whole surface of the earth has been mapped. So that leaves you the underground world."
An underground world that has been millennia in the making and, in most instances, has remained untouched by man. Which is why cavers are reluctant to talk about discoveries and why, one would think, they'd hesitate to share their secret spots with a national magazine. But, as Alvarez says, the cavers in this story "were very receptive to the idea that this thing that they love would be shared with millions of people." They're protective of their caves, but more than anything, they want to share their excitement.
Alvarez shares a few stories about his background, about his life as a National Geographic photographer, and about the making of this magazine story. Here's a video of some field footage from the making of this article.
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The Tibetan struggle for sovereignty is a story often sung. It's hard not to sympathize with a cause headed by the lovable Dalai Lama. But there is a story in December's National Geographic magazine about a contemporaneous struggle for survival in China: that of the Uighur people, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group in Central Asia. Photographs by Carolyn Drake bring this previously marginalized story into the fold.![[Slideshow: Picture Show]](http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2009/11/25/picshow_wide.jpg?s=3)
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