Fifteen years ago I was asked to write a book entitled Women Photographers at National Geographic and happened to mention the project to a colleague, a well-known male photographer then on the magazine staff.

“Women photographers? It’ll be a short book,” he said, flicking the notion away as if it were a bit of stray lint on his jacket sleeve.

He was wrong. The book was substantial in size (271 pages) and in the number of women photographers featured in its pages (more than 40).

To be fair, he might be forgiven for thinking the way he did. The tally of women photographers at National Geographic, as at other magazines, has always trailed that of men. Fortunately, the gap has narrowed since the