Photographer Page

Martin Schoeller

“She transformed the way we understand ourselves.” Dr Jane Goodall, D.B.E., photographed for National Geographic in 2010.

The Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti holds the record for the second longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a woman, having spent 199 days on the International Space Station in 2015. (NASA’s Peggy Whitson topped that record by almost a hundred days in 2017.) The longer she was in orbit, Cristoforetti says, the more her perception of humanity’s time on Earth evolved. When the massive geologic forces that have sculpted the planet are visible at a glance, the eons in which we crafted pyramids and skyscrapers become nearly indistinguishable. It’s as if, from her vantage point, all our constructed monuments arose overnight.

LEFT: Yoel Chac Bautista, 7, Castaic, California | Self-ID: black/Mexican/”Blaxican”| Census box checked: black. RIGHT: Tayden Burrell, 5, Sarasota, Florida | Self-ID: black and white/biracial | Census box checked: white/black

LEFT: Julie Weiss, 33, Hollywood, California | Self-ID: Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, Indian, Hungarian, and German Jew | Census boxes checked: white/Asian Indian/Chinese/Filipino RIGHT: Maximillian Sugiura, 29, Brooklyn, New York | Self-ID: Japanese, Jewish, and Ukrainian | Census boxes checked: white/Japanese

Imani Cornelius, 13, Shakopee, Minnesota. Self-ID: black and white | Census box checked: black | Imani, who is African American and German, has a bone marrow failure disease called Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS). She needs a bone marrow transplant but a shortage of African-American and multiracial donors has kept her waiting for two years, because matches rely on shared ancestry.