for 20 years my cameras led me to some
pretty extraordinary places I could have
never imagined that I would be standing
on the streets of place like Pyongyang
North Korea and 20 years later I came
back to the United States with my
cameras and it’s been every bit as
mind-blowing NatGeo
spent a year covering Yellowstone they
had a single topic issue this summer
there were many decorated National
Geographic photographers out there but
the rest of them were inside the park
showing the landscapes the wildlife the
biology the tourists the glory of our
public land my job was to stand outside
the boundaries of Yellowstone National
Park because NatGeo knew it was just as
important to tell the story of the
people who live on the other side of the
line and what it means to live adjacent
to a national park on my first day I
drove through Yellowstone National Park
this is what I saw welcome back to
America ground zero so I lived my life
outside of the boundaries of the park
little towns like Livingston I
photographed them in the same way that I
photographed my life in North Korea and
anywhere else in the bars where I eat
dinner and Main streets I started my own
new Instagram series I called this one
work commute work commute wasn’t only to
make all the editors jealous that they
were sitting in an office all day and
this is where I was working it was also
that idea that we could take people out
into the field that a National
Geographic story lasts for an entire
year so why not bring people along with
you
I had another series hashtag dogs and
pickup trucks
but what National Geographic really
wanted me to do in Yellowstone was
tackle issues and mainly they wanted me
to look at the conflict and confluence
between people and wildlife the first
thing that I covered were bison bison
have had a very dark history in our
country we once had 50 maybe 60 million
of them roaming North America we killed
them down to just a handful but it was
also the moment when
human beings looked after animals and
the conservation movement was born and
they brought them back from extinction
and now the core DNA American bison that
we have today live inside Pelican Valley
in Yellowstone National Park but they
only have room for four maybe five
thousand of them and every year they
come out cross the line and wander into
our yards and into our highways the
Bison was named our national mammal this
year and yet in the West in many places
it’s still registered as livestock can
you imagine the bald eagle as livestock
kept in a chicken coop they’re not that
loved actually by a lot of people in the
West because of the proximity that they
live to the parks who couldn’t love this
guy he was being the Yellowstone bison
he was being tagged and tested for a
disease called brucellosis many people
don’t love bison because they fear this
disease and that they will transfer this
disease to their cattle once they cross
outside of Yellowstone and this bison
tested positive and this is how they
dealt with it very quickly
execution-style so they’re looking for
solutions how to manage bison how to
deal with them how to protect them but
also live with them and one of the
solutions is Native American hunting
rights as the Bison cross over into our
land outside of public land they give a
certain number of hunting licenses to
the native peoples I had the privilege
of going with these men and watching
them as they hunted this bison and
ceremoniously removing its heart in a
field and they’ve started a new program
to where they instead of killing them
they round them up put them in these
trucks and shipped them off to the
Native American reservations because
native peoples have a direct connection
to the Bison when this truck arrived in
Fort Belknap in the north of Montana
they let out school all the kids came
all the elders came and people
celebrated as they let them go and let
them loose on their land again
I photographed elk is probably the
animal that’s maybe the pulse of
Yellowstone
it’s what the Bears and the wolves eat
it’s also what brings in millions of
tourists every year these beautiful
animals you can see them practically no
other place but again outside of the
line people see them a very different
way there’s almost a cult of hunting and
it’s big business too
so I tried to go right on the line
separates the park from the rest of the
state this line right behind the hunter
that’s the actual boundary of
Yellowstone National Park and the
hunters come here put themselves right
on the line and wait for elk to come up
over the hill the elk know where that
lion is is amazing when they cross it’s
like they just saunter in home free but
when they don’t like this one on the
right the hunter shot him he stood up he
struggled trying to get to the line he
shot him again he slid right to the line
and the hunter said it’s a good thing he
didn’t make it to the other side because
we wouldn’t have been able to retrieve
him legally this is not a hunter this is
a biologist darting a wolf for research
purposes wolves were reintroduced into
Yellowstone in the mid 1990s because
they didn’t believe that the ecosystem
could be healthy without an alpha
predator like the wolf and they’re loved
inside the park tourists named them they
watched them with remote cameras from
laptops in their homes they have tattoos
on their arms of wolves and when they
see them through a spotting scope they
break down in tears it’s quite amazing
but again outside of the park it’s a
different story
ranchers fear them because they come
into their property they eat their
livestock and actually they just see
them in many ways as demons the big bad
wolf and these are not people who are
used to doing things any other way than
settling them in their own way they told
me we’re used to living with Wolves now
and we know that they’re here to stay
but we don’t like the federal government
telling us what to do
but they’re learning to live with wolves
and bears and they’re learning to ranch
and to live their lives differently they
used to just send these sheep up into a
national forest land and let them graze
for the season all alone but now they go
with them they sleep every night out
there with the Sheep and I did this too
I followed them all the way to the top
of the gravelly mountains the animal
that’s on most people’s minds right now
or grizzly bears Grizzlies have been
protected as an endangered species for
something like 40 years and maybe as a
sign of their recovery the numbers are
greater they’re coming further down into
lower lands they’re becoming a bit more
habituated and now we find them in front
lawns eating apple apples out of our
apple trees this is dusty he’s uh he’s a
bear trapper for the state of Montana
he’s sort of like a like a dog catcher
or like a beat cop he goes around he
educates people how to protect their
garbage and how to protect bears by not
allowing them to become habituated but
he also gets his 911 calls hey there’s a
bear on my roof again and they go and
they dart them and they bring them back
to the garage and they sometimes
euthanized them if the bear becomes too
difficult to deal with but usually like
this bear they tagged their ear they
brush their teeth they give them
inoculations and then they drive them
from Wyoming to the Montana border and
they let them go on the other side and
the bear catchers in Montana told me the
same thing they bring them into Wyoming
open the door
let him go into Wyoming this man’s name
is Nick Patrick he knows better than
anyone what it means to live on that
line to live with the wild to live with
bears he’s a rancher from Wyoming one
day he was walking in his yard with his
dogs his dog started barking and they
ran off into the willow trees he thought
maybe they were chasing a raccoon
and so he walked in behind them he
didn’t have his bear spray and he found
himself suddenly caught between a huge
sow grizzly bear and her two cubs before
he could do anything the Grizzly was on
him he said with one swipe it took off
his entire face he fell to the ground it
mauled him he played dead she let him go
and she was walking away he reached into
his pocket to see if he had something to
protect himself she turned and saw him
she was on him again mauled him dragged
him by his leg she let him live he
walked back from the willow trees into
his barn and he found a shop rag and
covered his face so that he could go and
tell his wife and his children that he
had been injured he didn’t want them to
see what had happened to him and he
walked in the house and told them to
take me to the hospital when we first
started this project we wanted to
photograph Nick because Nick tells that
story of living with wild better than
anyone else but he said he didn’t want
to be photographed then because he
hadn’t had the reconstructive surgery
that you see in this picture he hadn’t
been given this new prosthetic silicone
nose and he said I don’t want to be
photographed like this yet and it wasn’t
because Nick is vain it’s because Nick
said I don’t want my face to tell the
wrong story
and scare people away because Nick
believes that we have to live with the
wild and Nick says that that mother was
doing what any mother would do protect
her children and Nick said I want my
face to tell a different story I wanted
to tell a story of how we should protect
the land and we should protect the
wildlife and that we have to learn to
live among them so National Geographic
spent this entire year 2016
photographing national parks this was
the centennial of the creation of the
Park Service every issue had a story
about a National Park and I tried to go
to as many as I could to now that I was
back in America I took my children we
went to the badlands
we went to the Everglades and I hung
around with these invasive Python
hunters and I went to Yosemite I got to
go with President Obama
gsmd National Park he was there on
Father’s Day to tour the park with his
family but also to announce even more
land and seas that he and our government
decided to protect with that
announcement he solidified his legacy as
the best president we’ve ever had for
conservation protecting more land and
seas than any other before him I got a
chance to walk through the forest with
him just me and a couple of cameramen
and at the end he shook our hands and I
thanked him and he said hey aren’t you
the guy he took all those pictures in
North Korea I said yes I said what do
you think and he said it’s good I think
it was important we got to see something
we don’t normally see and he started to
walk away and he turned around he said
hey just be careful over there I don’t
wanna have to come over there and rescue
you and bring you back home but I made
it home exactly 20 years from the time
that I left it was actually fourth of
July the first day that I came back I
went to my sister’s house she had a 4th
of July party now that I’m home I guess
I kind of often feel like a stranger in
a strange land after being away for so
long and so I noticed and I photograph
the things that maybe Outsiders would
notice all the patriotism and the flags
and the sugary diet that we have and
maybe I’m a little critical but I also
know that my sister made these and so I
also feel loved and I also feel like I’m
happy to be home again this is my front
yard where I moved back to this is the
frozen lake outside of the house I’m
living in those are my footsteps going
out onto the lake and back to my yard
I had to go quite far out into the world
for a long time to feel like I could
answer that voice in my head and that I
could find my purpose and that I could
bring that purpose back intact and that
I could notice all the little bits of
beauty right here in my own country and
in my own backyard and so for maybe for
most of you you didn’t have to quite go
so far you knew that from the beginning
but for me I had to go a long way before
I could come back home so I want to end
by just thanking National Geographic
because they brought me back home and
they’re still sending me out there too
into the wild so thank you very much
[Applause]
it’s fair to say that North Korea is one
of the most isolated least understood
places on earth I was the first Western
photographer to ever have regular access
to the country
pretty extraordinary places I could have
never imagined that I would be standing
on the streets of place like Pyongyang
North Korea and 20 years later I came
back to the United States with my
cameras and it’s been every bit as
mind-blowing NatGeo
spent a year covering Yellowstone they
had a single topic issue this summer
there were many decorated National
Geographic photographers out there but
the rest of them were inside the park
showing the landscapes the wildlife the
biology the tourists the glory of our
public land my job was to stand outside
the boundaries of Yellowstone National
Park because NatGeo knew it was just as
important to tell the story of the
people who live on the other side of the
line and what it means to live adjacent
to a national park on my first day I
drove through Yellowstone National Park
this is what I saw welcome back to
America ground zero so I lived my life
outside of the boundaries of the park
little towns like Livingston I
photographed them in the same way that I
photographed my life in North Korea and
anywhere else in the bars where I eat
dinner and Main streets I started my own
new Instagram series I called this one
work commute work commute wasn’t only to
make all the editors jealous that they
were sitting in an office all day and
this is where I was working it was also
that idea that we could take people out
into the field that a National
Geographic story lasts for an entire
year so why not bring people along with
you
I had another series hashtag dogs and
pickup trucks
but what National Geographic really
wanted me to do in Yellowstone was
tackle issues and mainly they wanted me
to look at the conflict and confluence
between people and wildlife the first
thing that I covered were bison bison
have had a very dark history in our
country we once had 50 maybe 60 million
of them roaming North America we killed
them down to just a handful but it was
also the moment when
human beings looked after animals and
the conservation movement was born and
they brought them back from extinction
and now the core DNA American bison that
we have today live inside Pelican Valley
in Yellowstone National Park but they
only have room for four maybe five
thousand of them and every year they
come out cross the line and wander into
our yards and into our highways the
Bison was named our national mammal this
year and yet in the West in many places
it’s still registered as livestock can
you imagine the bald eagle as livestock
kept in a chicken coop they’re not that
loved actually by a lot of people in the
West because of the proximity that they
live to the parks who couldn’t love this
guy he was being the Yellowstone bison
he was being tagged and tested for a
disease called brucellosis many people
don’t love bison because they fear this
disease and that they will transfer this
disease to their cattle once they cross
outside of Yellowstone and this bison
tested positive and this is how they
dealt with it very quickly
execution-style so they’re looking for
solutions how to manage bison how to
deal with them how to protect them but
also live with them and one of the
solutions is Native American hunting
rights as the Bison cross over into our
land outside of public land they give a
certain number of hunting licenses to
the native peoples I had the privilege
of going with these men and watching
them as they hunted this bison and
ceremoniously removing its heart in a
field and they’ve started a new program
to where they instead of killing them
they round them up put them in these
trucks and shipped them off to the
Native American reservations because
native peoples have a direct connection
to the Bison when this truck arrived in
Fort Belknap in the north of Montana
they let out school all the kids came
all the elders came and people
celebrated as they let them go and let
them loose on their land again
I photographed elk is probably the
animal that’s maybe the pulse of
Yellowstone
it’s what the Bears and the wolves eat
it’s also what brings in millions of
tourists every year these beautiful
animals you can see them practically no
other place but again outside of the
line people see them a very different
way there’s almost a cult of hunting and
it’s big business too
so I tried to go right on the line
separates the park from the rest of the
state this line right behind the hunter
that’s the actual boundary of
Yellowstone National Park and the
hunters come here put themselves right
on the line and wait for elk to come up
over the hill the elk know where that
lion is is amazing when they cross it’s
like they just saunter in home free but
when they don’t like this one on the
right the hunter shot him he stood up he
struggled trying to get to the line he
shot him again he slid right to the line
and the hunter said it’s a good thing he
didn’t make it to the other side because
we wouldn’t have been able to retrieve
him legally this is not a hunter this is
a biologist darting a wolf for research
purposes wolves were reintroduced into
Yellowstone in the mid 1990s because
they didn’t believe that the ecosystem
could be healthy without an alpha
predator like the wolf and they’re loved
inside the park tourists named them they
watched them with remote cameras from
laptops in their homes they have tattoos
on their arms of wolves and when they
see them through a spotting scope they
break down in tears it’s quite amazing
but again outside of the park it’s a
different story
ranchers fear them because they come
into their property they eat their
livestock and actually they just see
them in many ways as demons the big bad
wolf and these are not people who are
used to doing things any other way than
settling them in their own way they told
me we’re used to living with Wolves now
and we know that they’re here to stay
but we don’t like the federal government
telling us what to do
but they’re learning to live with wolves
and bears and they’re learning to ranch
and to live their lives differently they
used to just send these sheep up into a
national forest land and let them graze
for the season all alone but now they go
with them they sleep every night out
there with the Sheep and I did this too
I followed them all the way to the top
of the gravelly mountains the animal
that’s on most people’s minds right now
or grizzly bears Grizzlies have been
protected as an endangered species for
something like 40 years and maybe as a
sign of their recovery the numbers are
greater they’re coming further down into
lower lands they’re becoming a bit more
habituated and now we find them in front
lawns eating apple apples out of our
apple trees this is dusty he’s uh he’s a
bear trapper for the state of Montana
he’s sort of like a like a dog catcher
or like a beat cop he goes around he
educates people how to protect their
garbage and how to protect bears by not
allowing them to become habituated but
he also gets his 911 calls hey there’s a
bear on my roof again and they go and
they dart them and they bring them back
to the garage and they sometimes
euthanized them if the bear becomes too
difficult to deal with but usually like
this bear they tagged their ear they
brush their teeth they give them
inoculations and then they drive them
from Wyoming to the Montana border and
they let them go on the other side and
the bear catchers in Montana told me the
same thing they bring them into Wyoming
open the door
let him go into Wyoming this man’s name
is Nick Patrick he knows better than
anyone what it means to live on that
line to live with the wild to live with
bears he’s a rancher from Wyoming one
day he was walking in his yard with his
dogs his dog started barking and they
ran off into the willow trees he thought
maybe they were chasing a raccoon
and so he walked in behind them he
didn’t have his bear spray and he found
himself suddenly caught between a huge
sow grizzly bear and her two cubs before
he could do anything the Grizzly was on
him he said with one swipe it took off
his entire face he fell to the ground it
mauled him he played dead she let him go
and she was walking away he reached into
his pocket to see if he had something to
protect himself she turned and saw him
she was on him again mauled him dragged
him by his leg she let him live he
walked back from the willow trees into
his barn and he found a shop rag and
covered his face so that he could go and
tell his wife and his children that he
had been injured he didn’t want them to
see what had happened to him and he
walked in the house and told them to
take me to the hospital when we first
started this project we wanted to
photograph Nick because Nick tells that
story of living with wild better than
anyone else but he said he didn’t want
to be photographed then because he
hadn’t had the reconstructive surgery
that you see in this picture he hadn’t
been given this new prosthetic silicone
nose and he said I don’t want to be
photographed like this yet and it wasn’t
because Nick is vain it’s because Nick
said I don’t want my face to tell the
wrong story
and scare people away because Nick
believes that we have to live with the
wild and Nick says that that mother was
doing what any mother would do protect
her children and Nick said I want my
face to tell a different story I wanted
to tell a story of how we should protect
the land and we should protect the
wildlife and that we have to learn to
live among them so National Geographic
spent this entire year 2016
photographing national parks this was
the centennial of the creation of the
Park Service every issue had a story
about a National Park and I tried to go
to as many as I could to now that I was
back in America I took my children we
went to the badlands
we went to the Everglades and I hung
around with these invasive Python
hunters and I went to Yosemite I got to
go with President Obama
gsmd National Park he was there on
Father’s Day to tour the park with his
family but also to announce even more
land and seas that he and our government
decided to protect with that
announcement he solidified his legacy as
the best president we’ve ever had for
conservation protecting more land and
seas than any other before him I got a
chance to walk through the forest with
him just me and a couple of cameramen
and at the end he shook our hands and I
thanked him and he said hey aren’t you
the guy he took all those pictures in
North Korea I said yes I said what do
you think and he said it’s good I think
it was important we got to see something
we don’t normally see and he started to
walk away and he turned around he said
hey just be careful over there I don’t
wanna have to come over there and rescue
you and bring you back home but I made
it home exactly 20 years from the time
that I left it was actually fourth of
July the first day that I came back I
went to my sister’s house she had a 4th
of July party now that I’m home I guess
I kind of often feel like a stranger in
a strange land after being away for so
long and so I noticed and I photograph
the things that maybe Outsiders would
notice all the patriotism and the flags
and the sugary diet that we have and
maybe I’m a little critical but I also
know that my sister made these and so I
also feel loved and I also feel like I’m
happy to be home again this is my front
yard where I moved back to this is the
frozen lake outside of the house I’m
living in those are my footsteps going
out onto the lake and back to my yard
I had to go quite far out into the world
for a long time to feel like I could
answer that voice in my head and that I
could find my purpose and that I could
bring that purpose back intact and that
I could notice all the little bits of
beauty right here in my own country and
in my own backyard and so for maybe for
most of you you didn’t have to quite go
so far you knew that from the beginning
but for me I had to go a long way before
I could come back home so I want to end
by just thanking National Geographic
because they brought me back home and
they’re still sending me out there too
into the wild so thank you very much
[Applause]
it’s fair to say that North Korea is one
of the most isolated least understood
places on earth I was the first Western
photographer to ever have regular access
to the country
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