"Chris Johns: Shaping How Millions See the World (Part 1)"

[00:00:03] Because of apartheid state of South Africa, that was a challenge. But when I did get to South Africa, I got there about the same time that Nelson Mandela was elected president. And to be there at that point in time with leaders such as Mandela, Desmond Tutu was extraordinary. And for Mandela after 17 years of incarceration and all he'd been through to come back and say,

[00:00:29] we're not going to be petty. I'm not interested in settling scores. I'm interested in building a nation for all kinds of people, for us to come together. And that profoundly shaped the way I look hopefully at the world. And then I had the good fortune to meet Mandela.

[00:01:00] Greetings and welcome back to the show. There are photographers who document the world, and then there are people who help shape how the world is seen. Not just through the images they make, but through the stories they choose to tell. And the ones they decide not to. Because behind every photograph that reaches millions of people, there is always a deeper question. Why this story? And why now? As usual, I'm Tom Jacob and this is The Camera Cafe Show. Today folks, I'm joined by Chris Johns,

[00:01:30] former editor-in-chief of National Geographic and someone who quite literally helped shape how millions of people see the world. In this first part of our conversation, we go back to where it all began. Growing up in rural Oregon, discovering storytellers through family and finding photography almost by accident. We talk about his early years working in newspapers, the lessons that come from photographing every single day, and how those experiences slowly open the doors to National Geographic.

[00:01:58] We also dive into some of his time as a staff photographer, working on long-term assignments, spending months in the field and learning what it really takes to build meaningful visual stories. And of course, you know, it's not all serious here. There are some great stories along the way, including a bit of a wild side, a love for fast cars, and the kind of moments that remind you that behind every career like this, there is also a lot of life being lived. And I think this is really what

[00:02:27] this conversation is about, how storytelling, photography, and lived experience come together to shape the way millions of people understand the world around them. In part two next week, folks, we go deeper into that responsibility, what it means to lead one of the most influential publications in the world, how decisions are made behind the scenes, and how photography can influence the way we see global events. But for now, grab a coffee and enjoy this first part of my conversation with Chris Johns.

[00:02:56] Welcome everyone. Today I'm sitting down with someone who quite literally has shaped how millions of us see the world. From spending years as a photographer in the field, to becoming the editor-in-chief of National Geographic, and deciding how stories get told. Chris, it's a real pleasure to have you tonight here on the show. Oh, the pleasure's mine. Thank you for the opportunity.

[00:03:20] Chris, before we go on, you have to know that I wrote some emails to some National Geographic photographers that I was going to talk to you, so I have some good stories coming on later. That's good. We may not believe all those stories, but I'll be interested in hearing them. Mm-hmm. But this is a kids-friendly podcast, so it can go wrong, Chris. No problem. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. Chris, what does a good day for you look like now?

[00:03:50] Oh, a good day for me is waking up in Montana, one of the most beautiful places in the world, western Montana in the mountains. And a good day, one or two of my grandkids, or all my grandkids are here, and we start exploring and having fun together. It's also a good day as a day when I meet with my students that I teach and see the work they're doing, and we work together on refining their voice.

[00:04:19] A good day is a time with my wife and family and a good dog walk, a good hour and a half, two-hour dog walk up in the mountains. That's a great day. Thanks for asking. Mm-hmm. Now, I come back to Africa in a bit, Chris, but I think you met your wife there in Africa? I did. I met her at the United States Embassy. She was a foreign service officer there in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

[00:04:49] And she worked, she had several different jobs, but one of her jobs was to help people in the press, in the media, who came to Ethiopia. And I wanted to go into a series of places because there was a significant war going on at that time between Ethiopia and Eritrea. And I wanted to go into places where many people felt were off limits. Because of the conflict.

[00:05:15] And she helped me, she and her boss, who was a great African hand, she and her boss helped me get into some places that were places that you can make great pictures. Anyway, one thing led to another, and yeah, we were married in Nairobi. But it was love at first sight, Chris? Pretty close, for me at least. Yeah, yeah. You've seen it. It has been since, thank you. Three children later.

[00:05:43] I could have asked her in Spanish this, Chris. And she could be very honest with me because you wouldn't understand. We could do that, actually. I'd be interested in that. I'd be very interested in that. That'd be fun. Absolutely. Chris, let's walk a bit back. What kind of place did you grow up? I grew up in the western United States, in southwestern Oregon, a valley called the Rogue River Valley. I grew up in a small town, rural town in that valley.

[00:06:12] My family's come from Oregon, Oregon and Washington, from the early 1900s. So there's a lot of history of their family there. So it's a place that I'm comfortable and shaped me in many ways. We had a small farm. And I loved raising animals in that farm, planting crops. And I really enjoyed that agrarian life.

[00:06:40] When I left there to go to university, I was quite certain that I was going to be a large animal veterinarian. And then through the course of my education, I took a journalism class and then took a photography class at the urging of some good friends, such as Dennis Dimmick. And yeah, it changed the course of my life. I had several very influential professors at the university at Oregon State.

[00:07:05] And then I went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota and worked for Ars Smith Schoonerland, who was an extraordinary man. And that set me off. And going to Minnesota also just opened my horizons tremendously. You went very far in one moment, Chris, because I was going to ask you first if when you were a young boy, your father, geography teacher, you think that that influenced you a little bit?

[00:07:36] No, that's a very good question. I think, yes, it did. He was a geography social studies teacher was the label at the time. So a little bit of geography, a little bit of history, etc. He was in particular really interested in Native American history, especially where we grew up. And he had a keen sense of curiosity. His father had been a logger.

[00:08:02] He had come to the Oregon Coast Range to cut down big trees and mill those big trees into lumber. My father had worked for him, was in the Army Air Corps in World War II, and then came back and went to the University of Oregon. That's where he got his education. Yeah, my father was a very big influence in me. But I say that with a little caution,

[00:08:29] because another person who had a profound impact on me was my mother. Part of that was that my mother was a master storyteller. She loved stories. She loves to tell stories. And she was gifted in telling stories. And from the first time I attended school, every day when I came home from school, my mother would say to me, even when I was like six years old, tell me about your day.

[00:08:58] And we'd exchange what each year, what we'd done, both of us, that day. And I think back on that, and that's what a gift for my mother to do that. She was also very energetic, very animated when she'd tell her stories, very entertaining. She was funny, really funny. And she loved to make people laugh, and then, of course, tell stories. Both my parents influenced me in different ways, but very positive ways.

[00:09:28] Mm-hmm. And when you went on trips with them, you didn't have a camera still, no? Because this came later. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. My mother's father was a keen amateur photographer. But no, I didn't really have a camera until I graduated from high school. And then it was just like a Kodak Brownie kind of box camera. And then my mother, in particular,

[00:09:57] was also a painter. She was an artist. She was, so she was always doing art projects. She was, always had paintings from oil paintings to watercolors. She was just always doing these kinds of projects. projects. And so there's a certain amount of absorption you have as a child when your mother's doing that all the time. And the same was actually true for my mother's father and my mother's mother, who was a very, actually probably,

[00:10:27] of everyone in the family, was probably the best painter. So, an appreciation for the arts I was exposed to at a very early age. And over time, especially, came to appreciate that. Yeah. Nice. Then, I think, let me remember, Chris, you became also of the future farmers of America the spokesperson or the president of it. You went to study photojournalism.

[00:10:57] Yes, yes. When you're in school as a teenager, you want to belong to something or someone. Be part of it, I think. And I had an interesting thing happen. I was in high school. I was in an honors English class. And I loved to write. Again, that was another thing my mother loved to do. She was constantly writing and submitting articles to various publications. And I loved to write as well. And anyway,

[00:11:27] I wrote an essay for my honors English class. And my teacher gave me a very poor grade for it. And I was quite annoyed. And so, I went to talk to that teacher. And of course, the essay was a reported essay. And it was about animal cognition, especially farm animals, which I raised as a kid. I raised sheep, I raised hogs, and I raised cattle. And she said that my research was flawed.

[00:11:56] And I came back to her and had a special meeting with her. And said, actually, it's not. Here are the footnotes. There's a lot we're learning about animal cognition. Now, keep in mind, this is in about 1966, 1967. There's a great deal we've learned since then. But she was a stubborn woman. And I had unquestionably had a personality conflict. And she said, you're not listening to me, and you're not capable of doing honors English work. I'm removing

[00:12:25] you from my class to a much lower class. You're not able to do that work, which shocked me. I'd never had anything like that happen to me before. What that did was strengthen my relationship with my classes I took on livestock management and what we call vocational agriculture. And then also what was linked to that was the Future Farmers of America. So I became really interested in all aspects of the Future Farmers of America from

[00:12:55] raising livestock. I love shop class. All my life, I've loved to build things. I've loved to build stock trailers. I've built all different kinds of things in shop. And then I love to build stories. I love to build magazines. I love to build books. So I had a really terrific teacher there. And he took me under his wing and he said, you also have some talent for public speaking. To make a long story short, I became president of the Oregon

[00:13:24] Association of Future Farmers of America, traveled all over the state, which was an incredible gift, and also really refined my storytelling skills in speech making and whatnot with his help. What was really, as I look back on it, what was really extraordinary about being president of Future Farmers of America was that over the course of a year, I held off going to college for about seven months, and

[00:13:52] I traveled throughout the state and visited, there were 70 plus Future Farmers of America chapters, and I would drive my dad's old Ford pickup truck to these chapters and stay with families, ranch families, farm families, all over the state of Oregon, and listen to their stories, and listen to their concerns, which was a place I was very comfortable in, having grown up in a small town and worked

[00:14:22] in ag all through school when I was growing up. that was an extraordinary gift and a privilege to be in those people's lives, and I think ultimately a lot of this was planting seeds, I didn't know it at the time, for me to become a journalist and to be comfortable and passionate about a career in journalism. Dennis Dimmick was your roommate in college? That's correct, yeah, Dennis. Dennis and I

[00:14:52] were friends in high school, we were both district presidents in Oregon, in the Future Farmers of America, and yeah, we were roommates, and Dennis, if I was to say one particular individual who got me into photography, I have to say it was Dennis, and that was just a relaxed, fun thing. We would, it is a very good photographer, and so he encouraged me to take some photography classes and work for the school newspaper,

[00:15:22] et cetera, and yeah, and we've been friends ever since, yeah, it's one of the most rewarding relationships in my life. Yeah, well, you have many friends, we'll come back to them in a moment, Chris, but you graduated school, you went to work for Topeka, and the Seattle Times. That's funny. What did working at newspapers teach you that you think you couldn't have learned

[00:15:51] anywhere else, Chris? I loved working at newspapers. I loved that I get up in the morning, and I had maybe an inkling as what my assignments might be, but I didn't always know, and even if I had assignments, something could change in the news, and you've got to do a quick pivot. The huge advantage of working in a newspaper is that you're photographing virtually every day, and in my case,

[00:16:19] it was six to seven days a week, and photographing all different kinds of assignments. The other huge plus for me, especially at Topeka, was the quality of the photographers I worked with in that staff, and then a gentleman named Rich Clarkson, who was the director of photography, who was a pretty tough, hard-nosed guy, but in still discipline I certainly needed, and I dare say that some of my colleagues did

[00:16:49] too, but that camaraderie, that lifting each other, seeing how other photographers worked was invaluable. I loved newspapers. There was no question about it, but I also wanted to do assignments where I could spend more time, where I could do more in-depth photography and reporting, spend more time with the subjects I was photographing, which we were able to do some, but

[00:17:18] especially when I was in grad school studying under Smitty Schoonerman, he had a great passion for books and a great passion for magazines, and I certainly picked up on that, and especially loved magazines, and books too, of course. When I was at Topeka, I took a leave of absence for four months, and I wrangled a thing where I could be embedded in a hotshot forest firefighting crew, very close

[00:17:48] to the town I grew up in. They were called the Rogue River Rough Riders near Crater Lake National Park, and so it was a 20-man crew, and it was at that point, just men, and I was a 21st member and had permission to go everywhere with them for four months, and we went all over Oregon, Washington, Montana, Arizona, California. And we went to fires, big fires, wildfires, all over. So that was my, when I got

[00:18:17] permission to be that 21st embedded member, I went to the National Geographic, and I asked if they were interested in the story, and it was a test run for me. So they said, yeah, paid me a minimal amount of money, slightly more than I was making the Topeka Capital Journal, but it gave me an opportunity. And I learned, of course, a great deal quickly, and it was especially baptism by fire in shooting color, because I was, prior to that, really a black and white photographer.

[00:18:48] And I see differently in black and white than I do in color, there's no question about that. It's a story that I did okay on, but from what I know now, it's a story I kind of like to have back. I'd approach it differently, and I'd approach it with more confidence, because in time, I became much more proficient in color. So when you say, Chris, I walked into the offices of National Geographic, you just walked inside with no appointment, and who you went to see, Bob

[00:19:16] Gilka, or who was there? Well, that's what happened when I was in Topeka as a summer intern who just had completed a year of grad school in Minnesota. I got this summer internship at the Topeka Capital Journal, and I was green. I think Rich Clarkson took a real chance on me. A small town in Oregon, and I'd done some work at Oregon Newspapers, and Albany, and Corvallis, and

[00:19:46] whatnot, but I was pretty inexperienced. For reasons that escaped me, Clarkson hired me at the end of the internship, and he said, I want you to go to the University of Missouri photo workshop. And I said, yeah, yeah, I'd love to do that. So I actually drove with Clarkson from Topeka to Missouri. Nevada, Missouri was this small town, and my advisor at the University of Missouri workshop was a guy named Bill Garrett,

[00:20:14] who was destined and did become the editor-in-chief of National Geographic. And I really liked that guy. He'd been a picture editor, he'd done some photography, he'd worked in Vietnam for the National Geographic. Really interesting guy, a larger-than-life figure. And I, again, felt so lucky that he was my advisor. And I had a story on a young couple that ran high school and had an unplanned pregnancy, decided to get married

[00:20:44] and keep the child, and I documented their lives for four days. And they were very open, it was a terrific opportunity. And Bill Garrett liked my pictures, he pushed me in ways I needed to be pushed. But that relationship with Garrett remained and grew. And it especially grew when I became editor of National Geographic after his departure. He and I kept in close contact over the years.

[00:21:14] So he was a big influence on me. You know, through him, and at that Missouri workshop, Bob Gilka was also there. So I met Bob, but the majority of my time was spent with Garrett because Garrett was my advisor. And occasionally I would go to Washington and have dinner or something with Garrett, which again was terrific. Just sit and talk with him and he'd show me stuff. He's just a very open guy who loved photography and loved journalism.

[00:21:44] Yeah, I went through Gilka through the channels and he didn't seem overly enthusiastic about my hot shot firefighter story. He said, how much do you make a week in Topeka? And I said, I just got a raise, man. I'm making 230 bucks a week. And he said, what if I pay a 250 a week? And I said, man, I didn't go to heaven. Yeah, so I did that. And then the thing was that story was, I just loved that story. And of course, a lot of the characters in the

[00:22:14] story were friends of mine from high school who were on that fire crew. And I didn't do a great job of the story, especially as I mentioned earlier, because of the transition to color. But I came back and came back to Topeka, but I knew that where I wanted to go because I wanted time in my assignments. So eventually I left Topeka and went to work for a wonderful guy, Gary Settle, at the Seattle Times.

[00:22:42] And another like Topeka, a great staff of photographers. And we could all lift each other and learn from each other. So I was in two very good nurturing situations early in my career. And you jumped from there to National Geographic or you were freelancing for a while before, Chris? What happened was I loved working in the Seattle Times and I especially loved working for Gary

[00:23:10] and I liked working for Pacific, their Sunday magazine. So I did assignments. I did all kinds of things. But I could see that for me to really do what I wanted to do, and again, it gets back to more in-depth, longer assignments with more time, more resources, that I was going to have to leave a very good job. I took a leave of absence and did another assignment for National

[00:23:38] Geographic, a story on 50 years after the Dust Bowl, what had become of the Okies. Had a terrific picture editor, Susan Welchman. And did that story. And then some other opportunities came along. And I felt that I was just going to have to take the plunge. I was going to hope that I could maybe get a contract at National Geographic. I was living in Seattle, of course.

[00:24:07] And but I was just going to have to take a chance. So I did. I left the Seattle Times, which was hard, but I felt the right decision for me. And then started proposing a myriad of stories for National Geographic. Most of them rejected for good reason. And yeah, I worked. I did some annual reports to put food on the table at that point in time. Yeah. This would have been the early 80s. Annual reports were pretty lucrative.

[00:24:35] Did a few of those just to pay my mortgage and then worked for Life magazine, worked for People magazine, worked for Time. Again, I was drawn to National Geographic because of time, resources and reach. I went into journalism to make a difference and I went into photojournalism to make a difference, to make a positive difference. And National Geographic, with its reach and how trusted it was and respected

[00:25:05] it was by all kinds of people and bridged all kinds of divides. So I was really set on a career at National Geographic. And all this amazing work you did in Africa, Chris, this was while you were a staff photographer or you were still contract photographer before? That occurred. My first Africa assignment was on the Great Rift Valley, a dream assignment.

[00:25:34] I'd never been to Africa before. And that was right at the point where we started talks about several of us, Steve McCurry, Bill Lallard, and me. Bill had already been staffed, but Bill coming back on the staff. And then eventually Nick Nichols, another great friend and good. Yeah. Great guy. we started kind of negotiations because copyright was important to us. But there were real

[00:26:04] benefits to being on staff too, just from a family standpoint and health care and all that comes with it. Because at that point, yes, I met Elizabeth, my wife, and we had two children, another one on the way. And they really treated us right in recruiting us to be on staff and to build the staff back up a little bit. That was an opportunity. I'm really glad that I took advantage of.

[00:26:32] And in those days, this golden era maybe of National Geographic, what were assignments like, Chris? Talk me a bit behind the scenes. You were really three, four months away with a bunch of rolls of film. Yeah. When I did the Great Rift assignment, I was in largely the Horn of Africa, East Africa. I worked on it for two years. And then I'd say the total amount of time in that two

[00:27:02] years I spent there was probably over a year. Yeah. I got a Kenya work permit and Kenya residency and worked out of Kenya and had an astrophic vehicle and stuff that I drove all over creation. And yeah, it was great because you got to research the story and through that research, find the story. So it really helped you with openness. It wasn't a shot list.

[00:27:31] It was how am I going to hold this together? And where that really helped me was it made me think more about essays and the photographers whose work I'd studied, especially in grad school. And the photographers I worked with in National Geographic, how to shoot pictures that were meaningful and could stand the test of time. That would be iconic images. And you had the time to do that and it was expected of you to do that.

[00:28:01] And you really didn't have many excuses because the support was great. I worked with terrific picture editors who helped me immensely. So, yeah. Now, having said that, as my career progressed, most of the assignments that I shot for National Geographic were self-generated, especially as I became a father, because the time away from your children and your spouse is

[00:28:30] precious time. And I wanted to do meaningful work, substantive work. So, I proposed stories that I felt passionately about and said, this is how I want to spend a year or two years of my life. Yeah, it was what a blessing, what an opportunity to be able to do that. And especially as we look now at how the industry's changed and stuff.

[00:29:00] Yeah, we were very fortunate to be in that era for sure. I'm going to take you just a moment back to Africa, Chris. Sure. What do you think that Africa taught you? Not as a photographer, but as a person. It made you change? Oh, yeah. Africa opened me, pulled me in. I loved wild landscapes.

[00:29:30] I loved wild places. It pivoted me more towards natural history photography, but also in the human context. And this long dance we have as human beings with wild places and the health of those wild places and our needs and the needs of those animals that are so precious and so unique to Africa. I couldn't wait

[00:30:00] to get up in the morning, but I also was really interested culturally in Africa. And where that really sharpened was when I started working in South Africa. And I wanted to go to South Africa for some time, but because of apartheid state of South Africa, that was a challenge. But when I did get to South Africa, I got there about the same time that Nelson Mandela was elected president.

[00:30:30] And to be there at that point in time with leaders such as Mandela, Desmond Tutu, even to Kirk for that matter, was extraordinary. And for Mandela, after 17 years of incarceration and all he'd been through, to come back and say, we're not going to be petty. I'm not interested in settling scores. I'm interested in building a nation for all kinds of people for us to come together.

[00:31:00] And that profoundly shaped the way I look hopefully at the world. And then I had the good fortune to meet Mandela and spend some time with him. A story that he told a wonderful writer I was working with, Peter Godwin, the Zimbabweans. He told me and Peter some extraordinary stories. and Peter and I did a book together on Southern Africa and Mandela let us use those stories in the foreword,

[00:31:30] which was, again, one of the great pleasures of my life. And I had high expectations when I met him and he exceeded him in every way. And I thought, that's a guy that is just incredibly inspiring. That notion of kindness, strength though, but forgiveness, really resonated with me. But the other thing I will say is that in Africa I witnessed

[00:32:00] shocking things. I witnessed human brutality in some cases at its worst. Let's put it this way, when the Rwanda genocide occurred, I was not surprised. I was devastated. I was stricken. But I don't mean sugarcoat this either. But yeah, no place I've worked affected me personally nearly to the degree that Africa did.

[00:32:30] Just out of this talk, Chris, this was maybe 96 or 97 when this happened? I think, no? 98? 96, 98? Something like this? Yeah. Because I studied film school for documentary and I did a project, I did my final project with two girls. One was from Burundi, another one was from Rwanda, they were Hutu and Tutsi. I studied in Brussels and Belgium and they brought them

[00:32:59] there and they were, they would be enemies in their country but they were best friends and they were 17 and they could not leave Belgium. And I did my final work with them and the girls never got to see it because suddenly they turned 18 and they took them out of the country, out of Belgium and I never saw them again but it was such an amazing experience to go to go out and to show them around Belgium, take the train, show them things they'd never seen and tell their history.

[00:33:29] It's very difficult so I can imagine a bit where you were going through there. Yeah, it was, there are things that happened that I witnessed that haunt me to this day. I'm sure, you know, where the, what happened to those girls and not knowing haunts you. That's, that's a part of journalism. If those things don't rattle you, if they don't haunt you, then you need to leave, you need to leave journalism.

[00:34:00] Chris, let's walk a bit to what I told you before that I spoken to some National Geographic photographers and they wrote me emails back. I have to read this because Sarah Lean was the first one to reply and she told me, we both worked at the Topeka Capital Journal in the 80s, we did not overlap for a long time but we established a friendship that had lasted until today. Chris was an accomplished and dedicated photojournalist

[00:34:29] since forever and he was a bit of a wild man back in those days too. Ask him about the mischief he got up with others on the Topeka Capital Journal stuff, especially Jim Richardson. I wish I had more details but much happened before I got there. But she says, anyway, ask him about your fascination with European fast cars because you got a Porsche 911 that she never saw you driving. Yeah, I've had

[00:34:58] an infatuation with Porsches, there's no question about that. And they haven't always brought out the best of me from a law enforcement perspective. Crashed one, actually with Dennis Dimmick, I crashed one and rolled it down a mountain and we both survived, walked away without a scratch. But that was poor judgment on my part, just going too fast, let's be honest. And yeah, that was a wake-up call. Yeah, I guess

[00:35:29] Sarah's right, maybe there's a bit of a wild streak. And that's a wrap today, folks, for my talk with Chris Jones. Chris, sorry, reminds us that the way we see the world doesn't start with the camera. It starts much earlier in all those experiences, the people, and the moments that shape how we learn to look. If you'd like to explore more of Chris' work, be sure to take a look at his projects and the incredible body of work he created over the years, you can find everything back in our show notes. And of course,

[00:35:59] if you enjoyed our episode, have a look at our website, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and follow us here on any podcast platform or on YouTube. Until next time, folks, keep shooting and keep on moving your own photography forwards. And next week, we continue this conversation, diving into what it really means to shape how millions of people see the world. I'll see you next week here for part 2 with Chris Jones. Adios!