Capturing a city in one walk
In today’s newsletter, a photographer and writer find the Bay Area’s jewels; a look at how America’s salmon capital kept COVID-19 at bay; a boy’s pet … and an iconic image from Greece’s fires
This article is an adaptation of our weekly Photography newsletter that was originally sent out on August 14, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Sign up here.
By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences
For generations, the hills and sweeping vistas of the Bay Area have attracted world-class photographers, including legends Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cunningham.
Lange’s work fascinated photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti as she grew up thousands of miles away in Argentina. In these images for Nat Geo, the Magnum photographer, known for her lyrical, softly drawn work, tried to capture the area’s visual bouquet along a popular day hike in San Francisco.
On parts of the Crosstown Trail, which cuts diagonally through the city, you forget that you are in an urban environment. Pictured above, Alessandra shows a coastal view that bears few clues to its urban setting (apart from a bridge far in the background). Below, Alessandra presents an overview of city and sea in the Lobos Valley Trail portion of the hike.
Cinematic: Below left, Alessandra shows Golden Gate Heights; below right, a couple gazes out at the city from an overlook in John McLaren Park.
Hoops: The Crosstown Trail descends from the heights to offer scenes of everyday life, such as this one below of a basketball game in John McLaren Park.
Back to nature: Below left, children play in the woods of Glen Canyon Park, one of many parks connected to the trail. Below right, at sunset, people explore Lands End Lookout at the northwestern end of the trail.
Horizons: A dock juts out into the bay at Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, located at the southeastern end of the Crosstown Trail. See our full story on San Francisco’s Crosstown Trail here.
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TODAY IN A MINUTE
Greece fires: The images from the wildfires are shocking, but they are unlikely to lead to changing conditions for the boom in fires, Pulitzer-winning critic Philip Kennicott writes. Kennicott focused on a Konstantinos Tsakalidis image “that works on every level”—a portrait of an elderly woman on the burning island of Evia. “With a wildfire consuming a forest behind her, she stands before the world like a wailing chorus member from a tragedy by Aeschylus or Sophocles,” Kennicott writes for the Washington Post. See it.
It’s award season: Alessandro Gandolfi took the National Press Photographers Association award for best environment story on how climate change affects Italian agriculture. Monique Jacques took second place for photographs on illegal logging and trafficking, published in Nat Geo. National Geographic also won first and second honors for magazine covers.
Hot potatoes: Speaking of awards, who knew that the Potato Photographer of the Year had announced its winners? The contest, encouraging photographers to use potatoes to get their creative juices flowing, celebrates the trusty spud. See the first place “Fish & Chips” and all the other winners in the Guardian.
Not-so-novel coronavirus: How do you portray a world where some nations have two-thirds of their population vaccinated while for a whole continent, Africa, availability is a dream and vaccination rates are only 2 percent? That’s the premise of this haunting series of photos presented by the Washington Post.
Note: The National Geographic Society COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists is supporting new reporting worldwide on the pandemic. Among the projects: Bethany Mollenkof’s photo essay documenting her own journey as a first-time mom navigating prenatal appointments, social distancing, and COVID-19 as a Black woman. Mollenkof’s work is part of an exhibition running until Sept. 12 in Empire Fulton Lawn in Brooklyn Bridge Park, presented by Photoville and Women Photograph.
INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY
Are you looking at me? 12-year-old Cetin does a stare-out while playing with his goat. “He loves animals, especially the young ones,” says photographer Emin Özmen. Cetin left school at the beginning of the pandemic and does not want to go back, saying: "I only miss my friends, but not school.” The image is part of Özmen’s documentation of the daily life of nomads in southeast Turkey, a project that is supported by the National Geographic Society’s COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists.
Related: A rare look at a perilous journey in the Caucasus Mountains
THE BIG TAKEAWAY
Fighting back: A century ago, another pandemic wiped out 30 percent to 40 percent of a rural Alaska community, leaving a generation of orphans. Now, Bristol Bay, the center of America’s salmon industry, has been fighting hard against COVID-19. Strict protocols limited exposure and infection. “We made it,” Thomas Tilden, First Chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and a commercial fisherman, tells photographer and writer Ash Adams for Nat Geo. (Above, Tilden is pictured at home.)
IN A FEW WORDS
On that day, having seen the rest of San Francisco, the homecoming felt special. Turned out, the most beautiful part of the city had been my neighborhood all along.
Chaney Kwak, Author, The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship, From: You can walk across San Francisco in a day. Here’s how.
THE LAST GLIMPSE
Beating the heat: That’s the theme of our latest collection from Nat Geo’s extensive photo collection. Among the archival images gathered recently for our popular Photo of the Day feature is this from an exploding Mount Etna in Italy. Photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Carsten Peter documented two scientists standing next to lava and sparks spewing from Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Eruptions have been recorded dating to 1500 B.C.
This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams, and Jen Tse selected the photographs. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Rita Spinks, Alec Egamov, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have an idea, a link, or a story to share? We’d love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading!
