Photographer, adventurer and storyteller Aaron Huey captures all of his subjects — from war victims to rock climbers to Sufi dervishes — with elegance and fearless sensitivity.

Why you should listen

Aaron Huey is a masthead photographer for National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Traveler magazines. His stories from Afghanistan, Haiti, Mali, Siberia, Yemen and French Polynesia (to name just a few) on subjects as diverse as the Afghan drug war and the underwater photography of sharks, can be found in The New Yorker, National Geographic and The New York Times.

Huey serves on the board of directors for the nonprofit Blue Earth Alliance. In 2002, he walked 3,349 miles across America with his dog Cosmo (the journey lasted 154 days), and was recently awarded a National Geographic Expedition Council Grant to hitchhike across Siberia.

What others say

“My success is not measured in money. I have no financial security, I have no savings account. I measure my success by asking myself if I’m telling a story that the world needs to hear, if I am educating people.” — Aaron Huey

Aaron Huey’s TED talk

More news and ideas from Aaron Huey

We humans

Gallery: What inequality looks like

June 3, 2014

We asked an international group of 12 artists, designers, photographers and activists to provide one image that encapsulates what inequality means to them -- and to explain their selection. The results are stunning and thought-provoking. Warning: some of them might make you cry.

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We humans

A new way to honor the Native American treaties

September 4, 2013

Aaron Huey didn't mean to become an advocate for Native American treaty rights. Yet a 2005 assignment to photograph Lakota tribe members in the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota changed all that. He tells us what happened next.

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