Interview: Photographer Jodi Cobb Explains her “Desire to see the World”

National Geographic’s first female field staff photographer, Jodi Cobb, recently spoke to audiences in Kalispell about her trailblazing four-decade career. “I saw how big and diverse the world was.” said Jodi, “I wanted to be out there.”

Over her 40-year career Jodi has photographed cannibals and missionaries, British royalty and French aristocrats, terrorists and traffickers, Yasser Arafat and Princess Diana, four kings and six US presidents. 

She has been shot at, teargassed, mugged, chased by angry tribesmen in Papua New Guinea, and claimed as a wife by a desert Bedouin. She has traveled by camel, elephant, King Hussein’s private helicopter, Chinese army Jeep, Indian ambulance, Hawaiian outrigger, and coal mine conveyor belt. One of the first western photojournalists to cross China when it reopened to the outside world, she was also the first to be welcomed into the exclusive society of Japan’s iconic geisha.

A Changemaker who lights up the stage, Jodi has stories to tell for all of us who wake up each morning thinking: “What can I do that’s new today?”