The photography of National Geographic is extraordinarily multifaceted, and therein lies its magic. A single image can spark our curiosity or influence our collective consciousness. I’ve known this since I was a little girl in Iowa, leafing through the pages of National Geographic magazine in my elementary school’s library. To this day, I vividly remember the impact of the iconic image of King Tutankhamun’s funerary mask on this March 1977 cover. It was a passport to an ancient dynasty, a visual journey of archaeological discovery that ignited my imagination.

Photography was published in National Geographic for the first time in 1889, the year after the National Geographic Society and the magazine were created. It’s been a tremendous