Taschen releases two volumes of National Geographic’s best photographs from the past 125 years

Over the five generations it’s been in print, National Geographic has firmly established itself as the go-to place for captivating and educational photographs, illustrations and stories from around the globe. A joint venture with 21st Century Fox, National Geographic reinvests 27% of all proceeds to conservation, inspiring millions of readers to “explore and care for the planet we inhabit.”

Sourced directly from the magazine’s archives of pioneering travel, wildlife and portraiture photo essays – and adapted from Taschen’s three-volume edition – Around the World in 125 Years, Europe and Asia & Oceania feature hundreds of photographs “almost as rich and colourful as the world itself”. Edited by Reuel Golden, previously editor of the British Journal of Photography, the books support National Geographic’s mission to “get you closer to the stories that matter,” whilst also providing invaluable documentation of the human race and its environments.

With images filling their (over 50cm wide) double page spreads accompanied by minimal text, both volumes are luxurious in their treatment of photography – a design altogether fitting for such monumental images. Chris O’Rear’s 1988 image of Jakarta’s colossal Istiqal Mosque, shows the rows and rows of worshippers from the largest muslim nation on the globe, bent towards Mecca from metres above. An image not dissimilar in its composition, although wholly different in its subject matter is David Alan Harvey’s photograph from Spain in 1991. The image shows foam-party goers sodden in bubbles at Ibiza’s famous Amnesia nightclub, depicting an altogether different human ritual.

Paris, Rome, Berlin, London, Vienna, Stockholm, Moscow and many other cities feature in the Europe volume of Around the World in 125 Years. Taschen describes the continental journey that takes places throughout the book: “We witness the hair-raising eruption of Surtsey in Iceland, where lighting rips through the volcano’s clouds in otherworldly hues of purple; lose ourselves among flowers and babushka-wrapped heads in Russia’s Volgograd marketplace; and tread carefully behind climbers across a crevasse in the Bernese Oberland.”

The Asia & Oceania volume is, of course, as thorough in its documentation of the two continents. Featuring photos from the likes of Steve McCurry, David Doubilet, Jodi Cobb and Frans Lanting, readers can “tread the mile-long rock cleft leading up to the singular approach to the lost city of Petra; take in the majesty of the Taj Mahal; get uncomfortably close and personal with Kamchatka brown bears; discover Japan’s ‘naked festival’ where men heedlessly plunge into darkness wearing next to nothing; and come nose to nose with gray reef sharks in the waters of the Marshall Islands.”

Standing at over 300 pages each, the XL-sized individual volumes, are a snapshot of humankind’s social and environmental advancements throughout the past 125 years. Photographs turn from black-and-white, to autochrome, Kodachrome and then to digital imagery also providing a means to reflect on our technological advancements through the world of photography.