Sarah Leen myFIVE
Sarah Leen is a photographer, a photo editor and a teacher. In 2013 she became the first female Director of Photography of National Geographic magazine. In 2020 she founded the Visual Thinking Collective.
In 1979, as a student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I was awarded a National Geographic internship after being the first female student to win the College Photographer of the Year competition. That summer, the renowned National Geographic magazine Director of Photography, Robert Gilka, had either enough faith in my skills, or took pity on me, and assigned me to my first magazine story; it was published in the July 1980 issue as "Return to Uganda".
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After completing her internship, she went on to work for several newspapers, including the Topeka (KS) Capital Journal, the Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. This pivotal time provided her with essential professional skills that would sustain a successful freelance photography career for over 20 years.
Her dream, however, was always to work again for National Geographic. In 1988, she left The Philadelphia Inquirer to begin freelancing for various publications, with a primary focus on National Geographic. Over the next two decades, National Geographic published 16 of her assignments, including five covers.
In 2005, she transitioned from the field to join the National Geographic magazine staff as a Senior Photo Editor, where she collaborated on numerous magazine features with exceptional photographers such as Lynn Johnson, Erika Larsen, John Stanmeyer, Evgenia Arbugaeva, Lynsey Addario, David Guttenfelder, Abelardo Morell, Jonas Bendiksen, Joel Sartore, Jim Richardson, and many others.
She was promoted in 2013 to become the first female Director of Photography for National Geographic Partners. In 2019, she left National Geographic to refocus her creative pursuits on photo editing and teaching, working directly with photographers and publishers. Editing photography books quickly became her passion, presenting a fulfilling challenge and an ongoing learning experience. Since 2019, she has had the pleasure of editing several books with publisher FotoEvidence, as well as with talented photographers publishing their own books.
In 2023, she had the unique honor of editing Ukraine: A War Crime, a FotoEvidence book compiling the work of 93 photographers documenting the first year of the war in Ukraine. This project was shortlisted for the 2023 Arles Historical Book Award, awarded the International Photography Awards Book Photographer of the Year award, and nominated for the Lucie Awards for both Book Publisher of the Year and Photo Editor of the Year.
Teaching and mentoring have become essential components of her mission. She currently teaches photography and photo editing at the Missouri Photo Workshops, the Maine Media Workshops, the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, the Eddie Adams Workshop, and Syracuse University. In the summer of 2024, she will also host a workshop in Maine titled Female Perspectives on Visual Storytelling, specifically for women photographers and editors.
She serves on the Board of the International League of Conservation Photographers, is a member of The Photo Society, and holds a seat on the Advisory Council for the Eddie Adams Workshop. Additionally, she has curated exhibitions at Photoville NYC, the Annenberg Space for Photography LA, LOOK3, and National Geographic.