The history of women photographers at National Geographic has been one of exception rather than rule – but that was then, this is now. We are beyond the days of women depicted as decorative objects dressed in waterfalls of silk (the predictable debutante ball shot) and the assumption that the creator of the image was a man.

Yes, it was assumed. A 1967 photograph in the archives inscribed “greatest photographic team in the world” shows 25 coat-and-tie-suited men surrounding the desk of then-National Geographic Editor Melville Bell Grosvenor, suggesting, as photography historian Naomi Rosenblum wrote, that “the universal language of the photograph upon which this publication (and others) depended was solely a contribution of the male eye and mind.”