Photo Ark for Animals

Ten years ago today, National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore’s wife, Kathy, was diagnosed with breast cancer. That diagnosis, and Sartore’s subsequent need to stay home and care for his wife and children in their Lincoln, Nebraska home, spawned an unplanned—and unprecedented—photographic project called Photo Ark to help save the world’s species.
Through his Photo Ark project, Sartore has made photographic portraits of 5,400 animals at zoos and aquariums worldwide—and he won’t stop, he says, until he documents all 12,000 captive species.