I’m going to start before any adventures
for the magazine before I was out in
Antarctica before any of this happen I’m
going to start by telling you how cool I
was as a kid because honestly I was
pretty cool the first hipster ever
sideways trucker hat
I was kicking OshKosh B’gosh popped
collar the whole deal but really the
point of this picture is to show you
that from a very young age I was in
campgrounds and my brother and I were in
campgrounds and we were always raised to
be in campgrounds as my parents would
have it they wanted us to go out from
the tiniest stage and go out and
experience the world and push our
boundaries and try to understand what
the world was around us and that was
very important in my family so they
started a skiing when we were two
climbing when we were five in the whole
point was to sort of define our own
borders
this was me in the Wind River Range
close to where I live now in Bozeman
Montana at about I guess I’m 11 12 years
old
you know this is when questioning
boundaries started to take a different
turn I was a smart kid I went to high
school two years early and you know
exploring boundaries took on a
completely different texture at that
point and what I mean by that as I
started exploring social boundaries
rather than physical ones and when
you’re 12 years old in high school and
you’re hanging out with 18 year old kids
you don’t have that’s six years of
experience to prepare you for that and
so honestly by the time I was 14 years
old I was completely dropped out of high
school my parents sent me to rehab I ran
away three times and on the third time
as they say the third time is the charm
my parents gave up and it’s not that
they they wanted to give up or or I
blame them for that but they said quite
honestly Cory we’re scared of you we we
don’t know what to do and if you can’t
abide by our rules
then you can’t live at home so I was 14
and homeless I look back on the
privilege of Education and I shudder to
think what I was thinking but that was a
decision I made but that time period led
me to observe the world from a very
curious place when I’m on the streets
which was rare because oftentimes my
friends helped me and I wasn’t actually
sleeping on the streets too much but
sometimes I was and when I would see
people picking out of garbage cans it
took on a different tone to me when I
myself would have to look for food it
took on a different tone and what I mean
by that is I started to see this as
closer to our natural state that is the
forager foraging and everybody in this
room is actually much further removed in
our evolved trajectory than we then we
like to think that forager is far closer
to the way we evolved and and it was
that story that time seeing people
struggle that actually got me excited
about telling bigger stories and thank
God for my parents because they did
start me climbing so young that it had a
gravitational or I guess an
anti-gravitational pole back to it
climbing was a thing that got me out of
this because I came back I was driven to
do something and oddly enough visually
and in just in the very nature of it its
allegorical to human struggle its it’s
perfect for telling the story of what
humans are capable of and how much we
can overcome and not only that visually
it’s just stunning and you can grab
people and you can capture their
imagination so my early career was all
about this I would go out and I would
take pictures with really crappy cameras
and I would try to side to sell them to
to companies and with that money I would
go on other trips and I’d save it and
I’d save more and I go on bigger trips
and I’d sell to different companies and
so that’s how my whole early career
worked
and for a while it was very sustaining
and I loved it because you know I was I
could say I was a professional
photographer and people would really
respect me and I was really proud of
myself you know it’s kind of proving
people wrong at this point I was proving
everybody that said I wasn’t going to
amount to anything wrong I was saying no
I’m going to amount to something and I
think a lot of my early career was
dedicated to that a lot of it was
dedicated to making single images and I
call these single stories right so a
single story is is an image that you
provide to a company that inspires you
know some sort of inspiration that
really inspires people to buy raincoats
so I am a glorified raincoat salesman
which is fine release it was it was okay
with me early on but I started to see
this divergence between these single
image stories that I was hired to tell
and the larger narrative that I was
really engaged in the things that I
really wanted to talk about which was
not the heroic moment it was the
absolute offset it was the antihero
moment it was a thousand-yard stare it
was it was my version of conflict
photography in the outdoor space I
wanted to talk about what it’s like what
it’s like to hurt what it feels like and
naturally as you travel you know for
those of us who have had the great
privilege of traveling the more you
travel the more engaged you become you
become engaged with culture and you
start to grow a certain sense of
compassion or at least I did this is a
picture that I took a very very long
time ago but I remember it distinctly
because all of a sudden after looking at
this image back in what offs coming out
of the hills and Peru I remember looking
at this
and thinking oh climbing is kind of dumb
and it’s true because it’s a very
self-indulgent act and I realize I
needed climbing a because it sustained
me and B because it took me to these
places but the most important thing was
the thing that I had missed to that
point I was so engaged in my own
struggle on telling that story that I
was missing everybody around me so
culture became a very focal point in my
early development but again I wasn’t I
wasn’t a photographer of any note at
this point nobody was going to hire me
to go tell a cultural story I was always
going to be hired to go tell the story
of mountains that’s okay this is a
picture of Mount Everest on the left the
little one in the middle is load C in
2010 Conrad Anker one of our other
explorers asked if I would go here and
install time-lapse cameras on the Kumu
glacier to monitor deflation and it was
for jimbe logs movie chasing ice because
we wanted to look at the package the
impacts of climate change on the
glaciers in the khumba region
coincidentally you know Conrad could
kind of sense this I mean Conrad’s been
a climber for a long time and he could
just see me looking up kind of like I
mean the time-lapse cameras are cool but
that’s really cool like you know I want
to go there and so we actually finagled
we call down to Katmandu and I got a
permit to climb load C there was no way
I was going to get a permit to climb
Everest at this point it was too late
but they they they got me a permit to
climb low C and it was unlikely that I
was going to do it there was no way
because most people take about eight
weeks and they go up and down and up and
down to get acclimatized I had been
there for three weeks I hadn’t been
higher than base camp and you know I had
six days tells the summer window so
people were like well good luck have fun
you know go up don’t
that’s a common theme in my life have
fun don’t die but I ended up climbing it
I ended up climbing it in six days so a
total of you know three and a half weeks
from my house to the top of the fourth
highest mountain in the world and that
got noticed it got noticed by a guy
named Simone a mortal now Simone Emoto
is an Italian climber he’s known for
hard first winter offense and he called
me after this climb and he said in this
awesome voice I’m gonna do it again you
guys ready
he told ladies I’m not kidding he called
lady she said corny do you want to go to
Casa room two when did I meet in it and
I said I don’t understand what you’re
saying
but I would love to go with you because
you’re my hero where are we going castle
from – I’m like okay that sounds great
where’s that and he goes it’s in
Pakistan and for those of you don’t know
this there’s 14 8,000 meter peaks in the
world so 14 Peaks that are above what
roughly 26,000 feet and nine of them are
in Tibet and Nepal and five of them are
in Pakistan and the nine in Tibet Nepal
have all been climbed or had at this
point all been climbed in winter but
none of the Pakistani 8,000 meter Peaks
had ever been climbed in winter because
they’re about 600 miles north the
weather is much more severe and people
would you know a lot of people at this
point I think 16 expeditions over 26
years had a pet tried and failed but
here’s the thing I jumped I left before
thinking I didn’t even know any of that
likewise I didn’t know that if I did
this I would be the first American to
climb any 8,000 meter peak in winter but
of course I said yes and and all of a
sudden I was here on the literal
physical border of India and Pakistan so
that’s something to pay attention to I
remember taking this photo
mostly because
I saw it happening I knew the Sun was
going to crest and I knew you know the
we’re on our summit push here and I ran
ahead in crampons that’s really hard
it doesn’t look cool you’re like you
know I ran and because I ran I was just
so out of breath that I immediately
vomited and then I grit my carrot I get
my camera out I take my mittens off it’s
– I think it’s actually – 50 and I like
pull it up and I realize I can’t take it
like I get frozen I can’t turn it off
shutter priority which I can’t change
the shutter speed I can’t do anything
and it’s at a 50th of a second which for
those of you who don’t know that’s very
slow especially when you’re just vomited
and you’re like trying to do this and I
took this picture
and and that was that was that I knew
that moment was special because I also
knew in that moment that we were very
likely going to summit but the summit
there was just the beginning like I said
I didn’t know I’d be the first American
I didn’t know any of that and to be fair
had I known I don’t think it would have
been good for me I was climbing out of
pure joy and I loved it as we got to the
summit a storm hit and on the way down
we were hit by a massive avalanche six
days out on to our summit bid one day
but last day to base camp we were hit by
an avalanche and I sent this picture to
my mom when we got back and I said mom I
just we made it we’re back safe and she
goes ooh
it’s a lovely portrait is that Dennis
and I said that’s me mom she goes ooh
like ooh that’s gross
and I’m like yeah because I look like
I’m like ninety you know it is gross um
my face is all swollen do you guys know
that more people have died this year
from taking selfies than like shark
attacks and lightning combined
that’s bad news don’t do it but but do
keep taking selfies because apparently
you can get them on the cover of
National Geographic that’s a thing but
honestly to get serious for a second
that that moment as much as the
Avalanche was a defining moment in my
career and this image became something
it became much more than I had ever
anticipated it represents something much
deeper and I look at it now I look at
the gesture I look at the facial
expression and what I see is somebody
who’s struggling to deal with a
traumatic event a very very traumatic
event what happens to the brain is when
it thinks it’s going to die it prepares
it quite literally prepares for death
and so when people say you know my life
flashed before my eyes that’s a very
real thing it’s not the way you think of
it it’s not like all these beautiful
visions and maybe sometimes you’re like
Cheerios parking tickets you know it’s
all of it like compiled and but I see
this now and what I see is is a person
who is alive realizing they’re alive
after their brain has prepared for death
and what that manifests as in
Psychological terms is PTSD that’s where
it goes from there
the experience is locked in your brain
you your sympathetic nervous system
kicks in and you are continually
experiencing that moment from that point
on
so it’s spinning out and essentially
that’s just a corrosive method for your
brain and what you do is you try to find
anything to calm that spinning down and
swear all addiction stems from so I
didn’t know it at the time but
jeetu had given me the first American to
do something and made thousand-meter
pecan winter and PTSD it’s the gift that
keeps on giving but we’ll get into that
I went home and I got married I got
married to a wonderful woman we had a
wonderful group of friends we had
incredibly supportive families we live
an alternate we lived an alternate
lifestyle that you know some parents
would be a little
by like okay you’re going to go climb
mountains and you’re going to go climb
rocks and we had very supportive family
but the problem was that even right
after my marriage I started to feel
disassociated and I started to feel
withdrawal and I started to feel
confusion and darkness and I didn’t know
what it was I felt like there was a
weight pushing down on me like a literal
weight I’d wake up in the morning and my
brain was just going and it was like
this very loud silence and it reminded
me of a quote that I read a quote from a
book it says they carried all that they
could bear and then some including a
silent awe for the terrible power of the
things that they carried that’s by Tim
O’Brien from the book the things they
carry teach you didn’t just leave me
with PTSD it gave me something else it
gave me an opportunity to provide a
storytelling example to National
Geographic
there was a soldiers or Pakistani
military camp at base camp and because
we were there in the winter they were
very welcoming they opened up their
doors to us they were sort of intrigued
by us who are these three crazy guys
climbing in winter because in the
summertime you can’t go here it’s just
off-limits because there’s too many
people up on the glacier and and you
know these guys are 18 to 24 years old I
was so alarmed by what I had seen in
western media and what was actually
happening there so I took on the task of
trying to communicate the story in very
very brief terms because I wanted to
come back and have something to show to
say deke warrior who had asked she’s my
photo editor here who would ask hey can
you show me some storytelling examples
it was a very unique opportunity
extremely unique and to look back at
these and see what I was trying to do I
can understand it
and I think you know some of them are
okay but but oddly enough I just want to
tell how we got here these guys would
come over to our camp and they kind of
peek in and you know it’s like looking
like you know
they were six-year-olds and then they’d
have like kind of nervously walk in and
we’d have tea with them and then finally
the reason it all worked out the reason
we became friends is because they asked
hey Cory I know you guys have internet
could I check my Facebook so now I have
like a ton of friends named Farouk
Mohamed and I’m on the TSA watchlist
which is awesome I can’t get on a plane
save my life but you know it was a real
lesson in in in creating intimacy and
learning through nonverbal communication
and trying to take pictures that’s hold
deeper more meaningful stories and and
really using that which is different to
show that which makes us all the same I
love this photograph it’s like not
technically perfect what self-respecting
photographer leaves a shadow in the
bottom like it’s like hardly in focus
but the guy has a purple tracksuit like
that is dope that is awesome and who
drives their clothes in minus 40 why
would you do that but the thing is it’s
just like I’m a guy out drying my
clothes sure I’m in the Pakistani
military on the highest battlefield in
the world but guess what it’s relatable
and that’s what brings us together
that’s the power of photography it
brings us together it brings us closer
this is hard live living up here this is
very intimate space and to be invited in
and to be shown that level of friendship
was a true gift and it made me connect
with these guys in a way a very real way
where I started feeling much more for
their struggle and their struggle is one
that is is very very real
Bertrand Russell has a wonderful quote
says war does not determine who is right
only who is left and you know I found
this this foot of a Pakistani soldier
frozen in the ice on the glacier and it
occurred to me that this is somebody’s
son and probably somebody’s brother and
maybe somebody’s uncle
this you know these wars are ugly and
they leave scars and our actions as
humans have consequences they all do but
this led me to my first assignment for
National Geographic they said yeah you
can take a couple pictures we’ll try out
might not go so well but we’ll give you
a shot it was to an area called moose
song it’s on the northern border of
Nepal
just south of Tibet and you know it was
pivotal for Tibetan freedom fighters at
the end of the Cultural Revolution but
before that for thousands of years
before that it was a space of absolute
beauty and mystery we were using
climbing to access these caves and and
what I what I love about that is it back
to you know one of the previous
photographs it’s the hook Adventure is
the hook to get people involved in
science and then we can talk about
culture and human migration so you when
you’re telling stories you want to bring
these elements together that’s sort of
what I found works best for me an
effective storytelling always brings you
in it brings you very very close it
takes you into the caves it gives you
the smells and the textures it shows you
that dry dry that sort of sand
everywhere but it’s interesting when I
look at these now too I feel like
there’s a parallel with what was
happening in my life I felt like I was
standing at the opening of a cave
looking in or not wanting to go in but
just sort of being sucked in and not
being able to see and feeling completely
the sense of vertigo I didn’t know what
was happening and much like Matt is
doing here I was picking up random
pieces and trying to fit them together
and figure them out but nothing seemed
to work
in this image matt is actually finding a
piece of pizza
they chose ancient script a lot of times
they look like this
pick it up blow the dust off you know it
was tax records or things like that
sometimes it would look like this and
that is an illuminated folio that
predates Buddhism this is bun so this is
what this is the animistic tradition of
the Tibetan Plateau
before the spread of the spreading of
Buddhism
it gives it a deeper understanding of
how the culture there evolved you know
it’s really about taking images that
take tiny little pieces of the puzzle
and then put them all together that’s
what a visual narrative is and some of
them have to take bigger leaps another
but it’s its construction from the
ground up and you have to open yourself
up to seeing things in a very different
way after a very long time we finally
found what we were looking for which
with human remains this is rescuer
archeology these these these caves are
actually literally exfoliating off the
side of the mountain so we’d go in and
we’d collect samples that we could what
we were really looking for here were
teeth now if you think of this in a way
basically human remains are like finding
the corner and the edge pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle right once you have that
you start to piece things together the
reason teeth are important is because
there’s in in your tooth enamel there’s
something called strontium it’s SR 38 on
the periodic table and what that has in
it is a geo thumbprint essentially it
tells you where you were born
so if you can find somebody’s remains
and you get their their strontium index
and they were born someplace different
than where they died and you do that
with everybody in the burial crypt well
all of a sudden you’re painting a very
real picture about human migration and
trade and this is the story of our human
family this is why this matters we’re
connecting the pieces and what’s so
important about that and I think it’s
more important now than ever now this is
ancient history but ancient history
matters because it’s only through
understanding our past that I mean so
much especially this week only through
understanding our past can we hope to
navigate our future so we have to pay
attention to this stuff when things you
know when we look back and we look at
the events that happen how can we
predict the future and hopefully how can
we alter it to go down a better better
road because you know honestly we all
look up at the sky and we think oh the
world’s so big and it’s
infinite you know what it’s not you know
the sky might be infinite but the world
is very very very finite it’s extremely
finite in an extremely fragile
[Music]
for the magazine before I was out in
Antarctica before any of this happen I’m
going to start by telling you how cool I
was as a kid because honestly I was
pretty cool the first hipster ever
sideways trucker hat
I was kicking OshKosh B’gosh popped
collar the whole deal but really the
point of this picture is to show you
that from a very young age I was in
campgrounds and my brother and I were in
campgrounds and we were always raised to
be in campgrounds as my parents would
have it they wanted us to go out from
the tiniest stage and go out and
experience the world and push our
boundaries and try to understand what
the world was around us and that was
very important in my family so they
started a skiing when we were two
climbing when we were five in the whole
point was to sort of define our own
borders
this was me in the Wind River Range
close to where I live now in Bozeman
Montana at about I guess I’m 11 12 years
old
you know this is when questioning
boundaries started to take a different
turn I was a smart kid I went to high
school two years early and you know
exploring boundaries took on a
completely different texture at that
point and what I mean by that as I
started exploring social boundaries
rather than physical ones and when
you’re 12 years old in high school and
you’re hanging out with 18 year old kids
you don’t have that’s six years of
experience to prepare you for that and
so honestly by the time I was 14 years
old I was completely dropped out of high
school my parents sent me to rehab I ran
away three times and on the third time
as they say the third time is the charm
my parents gave up and it’s not that
they they wanted to give up or or I
blame them for that but they said quite
honestly Cory we’re scared of you we we
don’t know what to do and if you can’t
abide by our rules
then you can’t live at home so I was 14
and homeless I look back on the
privilege of Education and I shudder to
think what I was thinking but that was a
decision I made but that time period led
me to observe the world from a very
curious place when I’m on the streets
which was rare because oftentimes my
friends helped me and I wasn’t actually
sleeping on the streets too much but
sometimes I was and when I would see
people picking out of garbage cans it
took on a different tone to me when I
myself would have to look for food it
took on a different tone and what I mean
by that is I started to see this as
closer to our natural state that is the
forager foraging and everybody in this
room is actually much further removed in
our evolved trajectory than we then we
like to think that forager is far closer
to the way we evolved and and it was
that story that time seeing people
struggle that actually got me excited
about telling bigger stories and thank
God for my parents because they did
start me climbing so young that it had a
gravitational or I guess an
anti-gravitational pole back to it
climbing was a thing that got me out of
this because I came back I was driven to
do something and oddly enough visually
and in just in the very nature of it its
allegorical to human struggle its it’s
perfect for telling the story of what
humans are capable of and how much we
can overcome and not only that visually
it’s just stunning and you can grab
people and you can capture their
imagination so my early career was all
about this I would go out and I would
take pictures with really crappy cameras
and I would try to side to sell them to
to companies and with that money I would
go on other trips and I’d save it and
I’d save more and I go on bigger trips
and I’d sell to different companies and
so that’s how my whole early career
worked
and for a while it was very sustaining
and I loved it because you know I was I
could say I was a professional
photographer and people would really
respect me and I was really proud of
myself you know it’s kind of proving
people wrong at this point I was proving
everybody that said I wasn’t going to
amount to anything wrong I was saying no
I’m going to amount to something and I
think a lot of my early career was
dedicated to that a lot of it was
dedicated to making single images and I
call these single stories right so a
single story is is an image that you
provide to a company that inspires you
know some sort of inspiration that
really inspires people to buy raincoats
so I am a glorified raincoat salesman
which is fine release it was it was okay
with me early on but I started to see
this divergence between these single
image stories that I was hired to tell
and the larger narrative that I was
really engaged in the things that I
really wanted to talk about which was
not the heroic moment it was the
absolute offset it was the antihero
moment it was a thousand-yard stare it
was it was my version of conflict
photography in the outdoor space I
wanted to talk about what it’s like what
it’s like to hurt what it feels like and
naturally as you travel you know for
those of us who have had the great
privilege of traveling the more you
travel the more engaged you become you
become engaged with culture and you
start to grow a certain sense of
compassion or at least I did this is a
picture that I took a very very long
time ago but I remember it distinctly
because all of a sudden after looking at
this image back in what offs coming out
of the hills and Peru I remember looking
at this
and thinking oh climbing is kind of dumb
and it’s true because it’s a very
self-indulgent act and I realize I
needed climbing a because it sustained
me and B because it took me to these
places but the most important thing was
the thing that I had missed to that
point I was so engaged in my own
struggle on telling that story that I
was missing everybody around me so
culture became a very focal point in my
early development but again I wasn’t I
wasn’t a photographer of any note at
this point nobody was going to hire me
to go tell a cultural story I was always
going to be hired to go tell the story
of mountains that’s okay this is a
picture of Mount Everest on the left the
little one in the middle is load C in
2010 Conrad Anker one of our other
explorers asked if I would go here and
install time-lapse cameras on the Kumu
glacier to monitor deflation and it was
for jimbe logs movie chasing ice because
we wanted to look at the package the
impacts of climate change on the
glaciers in the khumba region
coincidentally you know Conrad could
kind of sense this I mean Conrad’s been
a climber for a long time and he could
just see me looking up kind of like I
mean the time-lapse cameras are cool but
that’s really cool like you know I want
to go there and so we actually finagled
we call down to Katmandu and I got a
permit to climb load C there was no way
I was going to get a permit to climb
Everest at this point it was too late
but they they they got me a permit to
climb low C and it was unlikely that I
was going to do it there was no way
because most people take about eight
weeks and they go up and down and up and
down to get acclimatized I had been
there for three weeks I hadn’t been
higher than base camp and you know I had
six days tells the summer window so
people were like well good luck have fun
you know go up don’t
that’s a common theme in my life have
fun don’t die but I ended up climbing it
I ended up climbing it in six days so a
total of you know three and a half weeks
from my house to the top of the fourth
highest mountain in the world and that
got noticed it got noticed by a guy
named Simone a mortal now Simone Emoto
is an Italian climber he’s known for
hard first winter offense and he called
me after this climb and he said in this
awesome voice I’m gonna do it again you
guys ready
he told ladies I’m not kidding he called
lady she said corny do you want to go to
Casa room two when did I meet in it and
I said I don’t understand what you’re
saying
but I would love to go with you because
you’re my hero where are we going castle
from – I’m like okay that sounds great
where’s that and he goes it’s in
Pakistan and for those of you don’t know
this there’s 14 8,000 meter peaks in the
world so 14 Peaks that are above what
roughly 26,000 feet and nine of them are
in Tibet and Nepal and five of them are
in Pakistan and the nine in Tibet Nepal
have all been climbed or had at this
point all been climbed in winter but
none of the Pakistani 8,000 meter Peaks
had ever been climbed in winter because
they’re about 600 miles north the
weather is much more severe and people
would you know a lot of people at this
point I think 16 expeditions over 26
years had a pet tried and failed but
here’s the thing I jumped I left before
thinking I didn’t even know any of that
likewise I didn’t know that if I did
this I would be the first American to
climb any 8,000 meter peak in winter but
of course I said yes and and all of a
sudden I was here on the literal
physical border of India and Pakistan so
that’s something to pay attention to I
remember taking this photo
mostly because
I saw it happening I knew the Sun was
going to crest and I knew you know the
we’re on our summit push here and I ran
ahead in crampons that’s really hard
it doesn’t look cool you’re like you
know I ran and because I ran I was just
so out of breath that I immediately
vomited and then I grit my carrot I get
my camera out I take my mittens off it’s
– I think it’s actually – 50 and I like
pull it up and I realize I can’t take it
like I get frozen I can’t turn it off
shutter priority which I can’t change
the shutter speed I can’t do anything
and it’s at a 50th of a second which for
those of you who don’t know that’s very
slow especially when you’re just vomited
and you’re like trying to do this and I
took this picture
and and that was that was that I knew
that moment was special because I also
knew in that moment that we were very
likely going to summit but the summit
there was just the beginning like I said
I didn’t know I’d be the first American
I didn’t know any of that and to be fair
had I known I don’t think it would have
been good for me I was climbing out of
pure joy and I loved it as we got to the
summit a storm hit and on the way down
we were hit by a massive avalanche six
days out on to our summit bid one day
but last day to base camp we were hit by
an avalanche and I sent this picture to
my mom when we got back and I said mom I
just we made it we’re back safe and she
goes ooh
it’s a lovely portrait is that Dennis
and I said that’s me mom she goes ooh
like ooh that’s gross
and I’m like yeah because I look like
I’m like ninety you know it is gross um
my face is all swollen do you guys know
that more people have died this year
from taking selfies than like shark
attacks and lightning combined
that’s bad news don’t do it but but do
keep taking selfies because apparently
you can get them on the cover of
National Geographic that’s a thing but
honestly to get serious for a second
that that moment as much as the
Avalanche was a defining moment in my
career and this image became something
it became much more than I had ever
anticipated it represents something much
deeper and I look at it now I look at
the gesture I look at the facial
expression and what I see is somebody
who’s struggling to deal with a
traumatic event a very very traumatic
event what happens to the brain is when
it thinks it’s going to die it prepares
it quite literally prepares for death
and so when people say you know my life
flashed before my eyes that’s a very
real thing it’s not the way you think of
it it’s not like all these beautiful
visions and maybe sometimes you’re like
Cheerios parking tickets you know it’s
all of it like compiled and but I see
this now and what I see is is a person
who is alive realizing they’re alive
after their brain has prepared for death
and what that manifests as in
Psychological terms is PTSD that’s where
it goes from there
the experience is locked in your brain
you your sympathetic nervous system
kicks in and you are continually
experiencing that moment from that point
on
so it’s spinning out and essentially
that’s just a corrosive method for your
brain and what you do is you try to find
anything to calm that spinning down and
swear all addiction stems from so I
didn’t know it at the time but
jeetu had given me the first American to
do something and made thousand-meter
pecan winter and PTSD it’s the gift that
keeps on giving but we’ll get into that
I went home and I got married I got
married to a wonderful woman we had a
wonderful group of friends we had
incredibly supportive families we live
an alternate we lived an alternate
lifestyle that you know some parents
would be a little
by like okay you’re going to go climb
mountains and you’re going to go climb
rocks and we had very supportive family
but the problem was that even right
after my marriage I started to feel
disassociated and I started to feel
withdrawal and I started to feel
confusion and darkness and I didn’t know
what it was I felt like there was a
weight pushing down on me like a literal
weight I’d wake up in the morning and my
brain was just going and it was like
this very loud silence and it reminded
me of a quote that I read a quote from a
book it says they carried all that they
could bear and then some including a
silent awe for the terrible power of the
things that they carried that’s by Tim
O’Brien from the book the things they
carry teach you didn’t just leave me
with PTSD it gave me something else it
gave me an opportunity to provide a
storytelling example to National
Geographic
there was a soldiers or Pakistani
military camp at base camp and because
we were there in the winter they were
very welcoming they opened up their
doors to us they were sort of intrigued
by us who are these three crazy guys
climbing in winter because in the
summertime you can’t go here it’s just
off-limits because there’s too many
people up on the glacier and and you
know these guys are 18 to 24 years old I
was so alarmed by what I had seen in
western media and what was actually
happening there so I took on the task of
trying to communicate the story in very
very brief terms because I wanted to
come back and have something to show to
say deke warrior who had asked she’s my
photo editor here who would ask hey can
you show me some storytelling examples
it was a very unique opportunity
extremely unique and to look back at
these and see what I was trying to do I
can understand it
and I think you know some of them are
okay but but oddly enough I just want to
tell how we got here these guys would
come over to our camp and they kind of
peek in and you know it’s like looking
like you know
they were six-year-olds and then they’d
have like kind of nervously walk in and
we’d have tea with them and then finally
the reason it all worked out the reason
we became friends is because they asked
hey Cory I know you guys have internet
could I check my Facebook so now I have
like a ton of friends named Farouk
Mohamed and I’m on the TSA watchlist
which is awesome I can’t get on a plane
save my life but you know it was a real
lesson in in in creating intimacy and
learning through nonverbal communication
and trying to take pictures that’s hold
deeper more meaningful stories and and
really using that which is different to
show that which makes us all the same I
love this photograph it’s like not
technically perfect what self-respecting
photographer leaves a shadow in the
bottom like it’s like hardly in focus
but the guy has a purple tracksuit like
that is dope that is awesome and who
drives their clothes in minus 40 why
would you do that but the thing is it’s
just like I’m a guy out drying my
clothes sure I’m in the Pakistani
military on the highest battlefield in
the world but guess what it’s relatable
and that’s what brings us together
that’s the power of photography it
brings us together it brings us closer
this is hard live living up here this is
very intimate space and to be invited in
and to be shown that level of friendship
was a true gift and it made me connect
with these guys in a way a very real way
where I started feeling much more for
their struggle and their struggle is one
that is is very very real
Bertrand Russell has a wonderful quote
says war does not determine who is right
only who is left and you know I found
this this foot of a Pakistani soldier
frozen in the ice on the glacier and it
occurred to me that this is somebody’s
son and probably somebody’s brother and
maybe somebody’s uncle
this you know these wars are ugly and
they leave scars and our actions as
humans have consequences they all do but
this led me to my first assignment for
National Geographic they said yeah you
can take a couple pictures we’ll try out
might not go so well but we’ll give you
a shot it was to an area called moose
song it’s on the northern border of
Nepal
just south of Tibet and you know it was
pivotal for Tibetan freedom fighters at
the end of the Cultural Revolution but
before that for thousands of years
before that it was a space of absolute
beauty and mystery we were using
climbing to access these caves and and
what I what I love about that is it back
to you know one of the previous
photographs it’s the hook Adventure is
the hook to get people involved in
science and then we can talk about
culture and human migration so you when
you’re telling stories you want to bring
these elements together that’s sort of
what I found works best for me an
effective storytelling always brings you
in it brings you very very close it
takes you into the caves it gives you
the smells and the textures it shows you
that dry dry that sort of sand
everywhere but it’s interesting when I
look at these now too I feel like
there’s a parallel with what was
happening in my life I felt like I was
standing at the opening of a cave
looking in or not wanting to go in but
just sort of being sucked in and not
being able to see and feeling completely
the sense of vertigo I didn’t know what
was happening and much like Matt is
doing here I was picking up random
pieces and trying to fit them together
and figure them out but nothing seemed
to work
in this image matt is actually finding a
piece of pizza
they chose ancient script a lot of times
they look like this
pick it up blow the dust off you know it
was tax records or things like that
sometimes it would look like this and
that is an illuminated folio that
predates Buddhism this is bun so this is
what this is the animistic tradition of
the Tibetan Plateau
before the spread of the spreading of
Buddhism
it gives it a deeper understanding of
how the culture there evolved you know
it’s really about taking images that
take tiny little pieces of the puzzle
and then put them all together that’s
what a visual narrative is and some of
them have to take bigger leaps another
but it’s its construction from the
ground up and you have to open yourself
up to seeing things in a very different
way after a very long time we finally
found what we were looking for which
with human remains this is rescuer
archeology these these these caves are
actually literally exfoliating off the
side of the mountain so we’d go in and
we’d collect samples that we could what
we were really looking for here were
teeth now if you think of this in a way
basically human remains are like finding
the corner and the edge pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle right once you have that
you start to piece things together the
reason teeth are important is because
there’s in in your tooth enamel there’s
something called strontium it’s SR 38 on
the periodic table and what that has in
it is a geo thumbprint essentially it
tells you where you were born
so if you can find somebody’s remains
and you get their their strontium index
and they were born someplace different
than where they died and you do that
with everybody in the burial crypt well
all of a sudden you’re painting a very
real picture about human migration and
trade and this is the story of our human
family this is why this matters we’re
connecting the pieces and what’s so
important about that and I think it’s
more important now than ever now this is
ancient history but ancient history
matters because it’s only through
understanding our past that I mean so
much especially this week only through
understanding our past can we hope to
navigate our future so we have to pay
attention to this stuff when things you
know when we look back and we look at
the events that happen how can we
predict the future and hopefully how can
we alter it to go down a better better
road because you know honestly we all
look up at the sky and we think oh the
world’s so big and it’s
infinite you know what it’s not you know
the sky might be infinite but the world
is very very very finite it’s extremely
finite in an extremely fragile
[Music]
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