Annie Griffiths Belt was born to a mother who wasn’t discouraged by the word ‘No.’ Denied a position as a flight attendant because she wore glasses, Belt’s mother became a pilot instead. With her mother’s inspiration, Belt has never let the word ‘No’ stop her either. She has used her camera and her persuasive abilities to slip into the most closed cultures on the planet and in doing so, tapped into a life of adventure and education experienced by only the most talented photojournalists.

“I am living proof that when plans go awry, wonderful things can happen,” she writes in the opening sentence of her new retrospective, “A Camera, Two Kids and a Camel.” Understanding imperfection has helped her become a successful veteran photographer for National Geographic Magazine. She kicks off her book with these lines from Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”: “Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”

Belt describes her early years as a fort-building, mud-ball-tossing Midwestern tomboy who eventually landed a job as a photographer at a Wisconsin daily in the heart of farm country. She owes her career to an aligning of events consisting of a hailstorm, crop damage and a phone call from hard-ass National Georgraphic photography director Bob Gilka, who at the time was in need of a good picture for a book on natural disasters. A year later, in 1978, she became the youngest photographer at the Geographic. Read the rest of this entry »