By Cathy Newman

Bill Garrett, the former editor in chief of National Geographic, who died on August 13 at the age of 85, operated from gut instinct. Garrett, who raised the bar of documentary photography in the magazine higher and faster than anyone had before, had a simple mantra for his shooters: “f8 and be there.”

He ignored surveys and commands from on high, propelled by nothing other than his sometimes flawed, but indisputable, genius. “You could say he had both vision and cojones,” an admirer said. He was driven by the pursuit of excellence, gave short shrift to budgets and spent, it was said, a million dollars on a hologram cover that involved Steuben-made crystal globes (dozens were ordered), and photographer Bruce Dale’s technical wizardry to photograph it shattering to bits for a cover story in the December 1988 issue entitled “Can Man Save This Fragile Earth.”

Recruited as a picture editor in 1954, he marched up the ladder to Associate Editor, and along the way photographed and wrote two-dozen articles. When he was named editor on July 10, 1980, he was quoted as saying the magazine was like “motherhood and apple pie; you don’t fool around with it.”

He did, of course. He couldn’t help himself. Cocky, combative and stubborn, he loved smart, compelling ideas and people who could execute them, and pushed to extend the range of hard-charging subjects covered by the magazine. AIDS, for example, oil spills, and agrichemicals—dark stories that did not meet with unconditional approval from superiors and sometimes resulted in pulled advertising. Some subjects went too far for comfort. A story on the Bible Belt and religious fundamentalism with Steve McCurry as photographer, was proposed, approved, completed…and, killed. Too controversial, Grosvenor and the Board decided.

“Under Garrett,” Bob Poole wrote in Explorer’s House, a history of the National Geographic Society, “editors were strongly encouraged to keep an eye on…hot spots and to get the magazine’s writers and photographers in place for a story. Once in place, his photographers stayed in place—for months at a time to the consternation of the accountants—sitting and waiting for villagers to become so familiar with their presence so that the real work could begin.

He held court in the corner office on the ninth floor. In the era before Fox took over and while the yellow book was the still the torchbearer of the National Geographic Society, that entire floor was devoted to the A-list high-level executives on the magazine. In typical Garrett flamboyant style, he had the famous American furniture designer George Nakashima craft a walnut desk for him. (When he was fired ten years after being named editor after months of mounting tensions over the direction of the magazine, he made sure the desk came with him.)

He lived big. In London to arrange for unprecedented access to Windsor Castle for a story that James Stanfield would photograph, he stayed in Claridge’s and was chauffeured around in a silver Jaguar, but he knew how to get his boots muddied as well. As a photographer and as editor in chief, he hacked through rain forests in Central America and elsewhere. Once, a helicopter flying him and a party to the site of a Mayan tomb in Guatemala went down, shearing tree tops en route and dumping the crew in the middle of the jungle for an uneasy night until rescued by a second helicopter. He covered stories in Cambodia and Vietnam, and won Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1968 for his Vietnam coverage.

He adored innovation and technology. He had the magazine’s cartographers use satellite imagery to map the Persian Gulf and its skein of pipelines and shipping routes. He sent Emory Kristof, the pioneer of high-tech underwater photography, off with Bob Ballard to find the Titanic. In an era when picture editors laboriously went through film frame by frame on a light table with a loupe, he invented the “Garrett box”—a compact projector-like contraption that enabled an editor to click through a cartridge of slides and evaluate them more easily and quickly in a large, well lit format.

His aesthetic affected the design of the magazine as well—layouts were clean, graphics and artwork elegant. The magazine received recognition from the White House Press Photographers’ Association, the Overseas Press Club and the American Society of Magazine Editors.

And then it was over.

I witnessed and was affected by the turbulence of his abrupt exit as one of 11 members of the “Futures Committee”—the “young Turks,” as we were known— commissioned to produce a “Report to the Editor.” We had been asked to provide a blueprint for the magazine in coming decades, identify weaknesses, inefficiencies, and propose solutions; in short, our mission was “to turn an elephant into a jaguar.” Garrett was fired a week after the report was published. Some of the staff blamed us.

In truth, the report simply provided an opening for the coup, the result of long-festering friction at the highest levels, to proceed. We conveyed one of our findings privately. “The cold war between you, Gil Grosvenor and Bob Breeden has the staff confused…The future of National Geographic demands that you three find a way to mend fences…” But the cold war, unknown to us, had already ignited and reached critical mass.

“Wilbur Garrett: The Fall of a Pillar of the Magazine” was how the Washington Post headlined the story that appeared on May 7, 1990. The firing took seven minutes. Garrett told friends he didn’t know why he was dismissed. Grosvenor indicated it was a matter of irreconcilable philosophical differences that had festered for three years. The reaction from the staff was nothing less than grief.

After his departure, Garrett tended his vineyard (he made wine on his North Virginia property), pursued his wood working, and continued to follow his passions, among other things forming an organization dedicated to preserving the Mayan culture that succeeded in mapping 100 cultural sites, helping arrange the purchase of land for a biosphere reserve, and tightening laws for the export of archeological artifacts.

Why has the Geographic been successful? he was once asked. “I believe it is primarily because we still fill the same need felt by that small group of thoughtful men who gave us our start almost a century ago,” he responded. “…a need to address the insatiable curiosity to know what makes this world tick.”