Quick Facts
Biography
Joel Sartore (born June 16, 1962, Ponca City, Oklahoma) is an American photographer, speaker, author, teacher, and a 20-year contributor to National Geographic magazine. Sartore grew up in Ralston, Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a degree in journalism. His interest in nature started in childhood, when he learned about the very last passenger pigeon from one of his mother's Time-Life picture books. He has since been chased by a wide variety of species including wolves, grizzlies, musk oxen, lions, elephants and polar bears. His first National Geographic assignments introduced him to nature photography, and also allowed him to see human impact on the environment first-hand.
In addition to the work he has done for National Geographic, Joel has contributed to Audubon Magazine, GEO, Time, Life, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and numerous book projects. Joel and his work have been the subjects of several national broadcasts including National Geographic's Explorer, the NBC Nightly News, NPR's Weekend Edition and an hour-long PBS documentary, At Close Range. He is also a contributor on the CBS Sunday Morning Show with Charles Osgood. In 2015, he had an appearance in the film Racing Extinction where he photographed the very last Rabb's fringe-limbed treefrog.
Joel Sartore is a founding Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP). In 2012, Sartore was named a Fellow of the National Geographic Society.
Sartore resides in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and children.
Selected works
- The Company We Keep: America's Endangered Species, 1995, National Geographic Society (1997 reprint), ISBN 0-7922-3310-7, with Douglas H. Chadwick
- Nebraska: Under a Big Red Sky, 1999, Nebraska Book Company (2006 Reprint, University of Nebraska Press), ISBN 0-9648992-6-4
- Photographing Your Family, 2008, National Geographic, ISBN 1-4262-0218-0, with John Healey
- Rare: Portraits of America's Endangered Species, 2010, Focal Point (National Geographic), ISBN 1-4262-0575-9
- Let's Be Reasonable, 2011, University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0-8032-3506-2
- Fundamentals of Photography, 2012, Teaching Co.
- Fundamentals of Photography II, 2015, Teaching Co.
National Geographic works
| Issue | Article |
|---|---|
| July 1992 | America's Third Coast |
| November 1992 | Eagle Recovery |
| April 1993 | Andrew Aftermath |
| July 1993 | Northern California |
| February 1994 | Federal lands |
| February 1994 | Connecticut |
| July 1994 | Boston |
| March 1995 | Endangered Species Act |
| January 1996 | Utah |
| February 1996 | Tex-Mex Border |
| October 1996 | National Wildlife Refuge |
| May 1998 | Gray wolf |
| November 1998 | Nebraska |
| March 2000 | Madidi |
| March 2000 | Bugging Out |
| May 2001 | Prairie restoration |
| July 2001 | Grizzly bear |
| March 2002 | Attwater's Prairie Chicken |
| February 2003 | Clayoquot Sound |
| July 2003 | One Day, Three Peaks |
| August 2003 | Atacama Desert |
| July 2005 | Drilling the West |
| August 2005 | Brazil's Wild Wet Pantanal |
| May 2006 | Selling Alaska's Frontier |
| December 2006 | Ivory-billed woodpecker |
| August 2008 | Monkey Island |
| January 2009 | Last One |
| April 2009 | Vanishing Amphibians |
| July 2009 | State Fair |
| April 2010 | Silent Streams |
| October 2010 | Gulf Oil Spill |
| November 2010 | Mystery of Great Migrations |
| November 2011 | Rift in Paradise |
| May 2012 | Koala Rescue |
| June 2013 | The Rebirth of Gorongosa |
| October 2013 | Building the Ark |