2000: Robert Glenn Ketchum

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01 June 2012 Written by  Randy Woods
 The Bristol Bay Watershed, in Southwest Alaska, is one of many fragile ecosystems that Robert Glenn Ketchum is fighting to preserve. The Bristol Bay Watershed, in Southwest Alaska, is one of many fragile ecosystems that Robert Glenn Ketchum is fighting to preserve.
© Robert Glen Ketchum

After 12 years, we catch up with our past Photography Person of the Year award-winner, Robert Glen Ketchum, to see how his career has progressed.

Over the last decade, nature photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum has continued using his imagery to help protect the ecosystem of Southwest Alaska and the Bristol Bay fishery from the development of the Pebble Mine, a project he began in 1998.

In 2006, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, assembled a 45-year retrospective of Ketchum's work, including the textiles derived from photographs he has been creating in China since 1984. The same year, he also became a founding fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers.

In 2010, he was given the Partnerships in Conservation Award by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar for helping to build a coalition of concerned businesses and citizen groups. "That coalition gained considerable momentum in 2011 when the Natural Resources Defense Council joined and asked my friend Robert Redford to become the spokesperson for the campaign," Ketchum says.

"I have greatly expanded my new digital work, and as an offshoot of that have founded Jin Jiang Joy, a textile design firm whose imagery is derived exclusively from photographs of the natural world," he adds. Also, Ketchum has decided to make his business entirely green. "I've given up all paper communication and spent considerable resources on developing a social network, as it is a very effective way to assist environmental campaigns and distribute information quickly."

Learn more: robertglennketchum.com
Randy Woods
Story Author: Randy Woods

Randy Woods, editor of PhotoMedia, has been in the magazine publishing world for more than 20 years, covering such varied topics as photography, insurance, business startups, environmental issues and newspaper publishing. He is also associate editor for iSixSigma magazine and writes a job—search blog for The Seattle Times called “Hire Ground.”

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