“On the morning of December 5, 1988, a tall man with a black beard arrived at his office in the headquarters of the National Geographic Society in downtown Washington, D.C. For over two decades Emory Kristof had been a photographer on the staff of the famous yellow-bordered NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine. Much of that time he had been away on assignment. When he was in the office he was often in the photo equipment shop, toying with some sophisticated looking gear. But this morning he needed to write a memo. So he sat down to a typewriter and rolled a sheet of paper through it.
‘There is only one great area of exploration left to man on Earth,’ he typed, ‘and that is underwater. This is a continually evolving highly technical form of exploration where human strength and endurance count for very little. The Geographic has been in the forefront of, and a catalyst in, this area during all of this century. The players and the means of financing this work may have shifted over the years, but the Geographic has always been a major player through the strength of the images it has brought before the public.’
He could say this with justifiable pride, since Kristof had contributed not a little to those images. Describing himself as a ‘fisherman with a lens,’ he had made deep ocean photography his specialty and was widely respected for his expertise. He was also correct in maintaining that over the years the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’s coverage of underwater exploration had been unmatched among major magazines.
Kristof understood the reach and impact of that coverage. The magazine, the Society’s official journal, was sent monthly to nearly ten million members worldwide and had a readership nearly four times that large. Furthermore, the Geographic, as the organization was familiarly called, had long been associated with exploration. Nineteen-eighty-eight happened to be the Society’s Centennial year, and at a lavish banquet held just three weeks previously a number of famous explorers with close ties to the organization had been honored. Taking the stage with the likes of Sir Edmund Hillary, Jane Goodall, Mary and Richard Leakey, and John Glenn were George Bass, the godfather of marine archaeology; Harold Edgerton, inventor of the stroboscopic flash and the first practical deepwater cameras; Bob Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic; and the grand old man of the sea himself, Jacques Cousteau.
Emory Kristof, however, was looking to the future, and the purpose of his memo was to sketch out new underwater projects that would carry on the great tradition. But we may draw back and look more closely at the past. For Kristof was but the latest in a long line of talented photographers, painstaking scientists, clever improvisers, inspired tinkerers, and outsized personalities to have embarked under the Society’s flag to explore that most hostile, that most enchanting of realms, the sea.”
—Written by Mark Jenkins for Geopedia (https://nglibrary-ngs-org.natgeo.idm.oclc.org/geopedia/cameras-prelude)
In 1976 Bob Ballard and a National Geographic Society team, led by Emory Kristof, NGS photo engineer, boarded the research ship Knorr with its little submersible Alvin and set out to the Cayman Trough, a deep split 23,000 feet deep in the Caribbean Floor south of Jamaica that was tectonically active. The goal of this expedition was to take Knorr and locate the valley and volcanic rift that were theorized to run across the Cayman Trough.
While NGS photographer, Pete Petrone developed photos in the van, Kristof and Al Chandler, also an engineer, constructed a camera that was placed on the deep sea floor by one of Alvin’s mechanical arms and could be remotely triggered. "By improving the photographic process, the Geographic team contributed to timelier and less costly science, and their dramatic pictures helped enliven the magazine. But all this was prelude. The improved processes introduced by Kristof and his team would be crucial in what must be reckoned one of the great voyages of oceanographic discovery.” (https://nglibrary-ngs-org.natgeo.idm.oclc.org/geopedia/cameras-four)
In 1977, Ballard and the “Geographic Navy” (as they became known) made their first trip to the Galápagos Rift. It was there that photos from Alvin revealed four vent sites that were crawling with life: clams, mussels, crabs, sea anemones, fish, octopuses, ghastly-looking giant tube worms, and those otherworldly dandelions. Ballard and his colleagues had discovered biological communities entirely new to science. The food chain here did not ultimately depend on photosynthesis, like every other one ever known, but rather on hydrogen sulfide emitted in clouds from the vents, clouds that supported bacteria, which in turn supported the rest of the animals. This food chain was dependent on the fiery energies of the planet’s core rather than the fiery energies of the sun.
Kristof photographed and documented many shipwrecks over the years, but was probably most known for his work with Ballard on the discovery and exploration of the Titanic. These are just a few of the photos that he took on that expedition:
In 1985 Dr. Eugenie Clark also joined forces with NGS photographer Emory Kristof to observe via a submersible and photograph the behavior patterns of the elusive six-gill shark. Watch their discovery below:
And later “in 1989, David Doubilet, Emory Kristof, Dr. Clark, the Geographic Navy, the Geographic ROVs, submersibles and baited monster cameras, a television crew--all the elements of a sea symphony, orchestrated by National Geographic Magazine, the Committee for Research and Exploration, and soon the Society’s television department as well, were now drawing towards a crescendo…
Kristof and Dr. Clark led the submersible team, using the Nautile, which ranged down toward 8,000 feet, photographing many deep-sea creatures for the first time.” (From https://nglibrary-ngs-org.natgeo.idm.oclc.org/geopedia/cameras-five)
Follow Dr. Clark and Emory Kristof as they descend into the hidden world of Suruga Bay, where they encounter a Pacific Sleeper shark that might be as long as 23 feet! National Geographic EXPLORER dives deep in this Japanese bay to meet the unusual creatures that call it home.
Below are excerpts from an interview with Emory Kristof when he was still a journalism student at the University of Maryland doing some freelance work for NGM. On this particular occasion, he was assigned to cover parts of President John F. Kennedy's funeral.
Emory Kristof started as an intern with the National Geographic Magazine in 1963, went on to become part of Society staff in 1964 until he retired in 1994, and contributed to over published assignments throughout those 30 years. There are countless stories from each of those assignments, and his impact on advancements in photography and photo engineering will always be remembered.
Banner Photo Credit: Renan Ozturk
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