Annie's Bio

Annie Griffiths Belt

"As a photographer I have learned that women really do hold up half the sky; that language isn't always necessary, but touch usually is; that all people are not alike, but they do mostly have the same hopes and fears; that judging others does great harm but listening to them enriches; that it is impossible to hate a group of people once you get to know one of them as an individual."

Born and raised in Minneapolis, National Geographic photographer, Annie Griffiths Belt earned her bachelor of arts in Photojournalism from the University of Minnesota. Since then she has photographed dozens of magazine and book projects for the Society, including National Geographic Magazine stories on Lawrence of Arabia, Baja California, Israel's Galilee, Petra, Sydney, Vancouver, England's Lake District, and Jerusalem, as well having her work featured in the Geographic book National Geographic Women Photographers.

Belt's work has also appeared in LIFE, Geo, Smithsonian, Fortune, Merian, Paris Match, Stern, and many other publications. She has contributed photographs to numerous books, including A Day in the Life of Ireland, The Power to Heal, Women in the Material World and A Day in the Life of Italy. Belt also produces annual photographic calendars for Church World Service and Habitat for Humanity.

She has received awards from the National Press Photographers Association, the Associated Press, the National Organization of Women, The University of Minnesota, and the White House News Photographers Association. With a grant from National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council, Belt and author Barbara Kingsolver created Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands, a National Geographic book celebrating the last pristine wilderness in North America. Proceeds from the book have raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for land conservation grants. In 2006, Belt received the prestigious Fellowship honor from the International League of Conservation Photography.

Belt's photographs have been exhibited in New York, Washington, Moscow, Tokyo and Perpignon. She is currently at work on a Photo-Memoir of her life on the road with her family called A Camera, Two Kids and a Camel.

In addition to her photography, Belt has served as photo editor for more than a dozen book projects. Belt lectures and teaches photography workshops regularly and was a Visiting Professor of Photography at Ohio University. She was featured in a PBS documentary while in Israel on assignment for the National Geographic and appears frequently on NBC's Today Show.

Belt makes her home in Great Falls, Virginia, with her husband, National Geographic senior editor Don Belt, and their two children, Lily and Charlie.

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