In January 1888, the National Geographic Society was set up in Washington DC as a club for established academics and wealthy patrons committed to travel. That October, the Society’s official journal, National Geographic Magazine, later shortened to National Geographic, came out with its first issue. The next year, the magazine published a rather dull half-tone photo engraving of North America. Although the popular Illustrated London News, the world’s first illustrated weekly newspaper, and The Graphic had been combining text with visuals for over 40 years, with its more specialized readership, the National Geographic had to tread cautiously: its predominantly scientific clientele looked askance at the use of illustrative visuals, viewing these as populist moves inconsequential to the mainstream discourse of the times. Invincible support came from the scientist and engineer, Alexander Graham Bell, a founding member of the Society — best known as the inventor of the first telephone. Bell was a strong advocate of the visual, pushing for the use of photographs during his presidency of the National Geographic Society from 1897 to 1904.

Bell’s commitment was not based merely on a fascination for the photograph: he sensed that as the camera was one of the most profoundly significant inventions of the era, the way to go was a strong text-cum-photograph format for articles and essays. His hunch was not wrong; subscriptions rose dramatically as a growing readership indulged in travel fantasies, their imagination richly fuelled by photographs of distant lands and people. In 1915, a promotional pamphlet declared, “National Geographic magazine has found a new universal language which requires no deep study… the language of the photograph!” In these early years, it was not unusual for volunteers to offer to venture into the unknown and bring back a cache of material for the magazine. Of course, their credentials (if not pedigree) were vetted thoroughly by the snooty establishment of the elite of the National Geographic Society.

It was hardly surprising then that, in 1922, Janet Elliott Wulsin, daughter of a president of a major railroad company, and her Harvard-educated husband, Frederick, were given a hearing by the formidable — if not intractable — president of the Society, Gilbert Grosvenor. Their recent experience suitably impressed the powers that be; the young couple had successfully completed a trip to China to enhance the collection of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology for which the university had provided a small stipend. It was no easy job to get a financial commitment from the Society and its budgetary accounting requirements as well as strict rules on ownership of materials produced were enough to daunt the faint-hearted. After months of negotiation and discussion peppered with despair and frustration for the Wulsins, the National Geographic Central China Expedition was approved of. Its mandate — exploring the Kweichow region in southwest China and collecting botanical and zoological specimens, making ethnological observations as well as writing articles and visually documenting the entire experience. Janet was quite clear that though the primary responsibility was to be Frederick’s, she was going to train herself in a range of photography-related skills as well as understand collection and preservation techniques. These were apart from her role of diligent letter-writer and scribe, ingrained in appropriately brought up young women of that age. An official archive of the Wulsins’ trips as well as innumerable letters, journal entries and family records that were accessed many years later by Janet’s daughter, Mabel Cabot, resulted in Vanished Kingdoms — A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China and Mongolia 1921-25.

Janet concentrated on learning how to develop photographs — an activity that was to prove extremely challenging in varying outdoor conditions. For her husband — clearly the worrier of the pair — not really proficient in photography, it was to be a fair challenge to meet Grosvenor’s interest in the new medium. An apprehensive Frederick wrote to his mother that “it behooves me to send very fine ones [photographs] if I want to keep his [Grosvenor’s] support”. Frederick resolved to make photographs his primary concern as the opinionated president had told him more than once that the quality of articles worried him less, “for an article can always be patched while a picture cannot”. A very significant observation from a pre-digital visual age — but one in which editorial licence with written texts was obviously accepted. For the remaining months in the United States of America, the Wulsins concentrated on sourcing the right kind of cameras, tripods and films, as well as more general equipment for their trip. Needless to say, there were enough doomsday soothsayers both at home and later, in China, who advised Janet to rethink her decision to venture into the dangerous unknown. Janet remained undeterred.

On their return to Peking, the Wulsins found that growing unrest in the part of China that they planned to explore had made their plans clearly untenable. Instead, they planned to go to Kansu, a province located in the northwest. As there was no objection from the US to the changed itinerary, in March 1923, an advance party reached Paotow, “a bustling city on the Mongolian border”, their base before the camel safari ventured into the desert. Here, like any modern-day tourist, Janet wandered in the streets, looking for photo-ops. In fact, with her well-honed skills in developing and care of negatives, she appeared to be the more ‘complete’ photographer. In months to come, Frederick would take charge of his Graflex with great ease, photographing the ‘official’, while Janet’s eye captured the minutiae of life. It is not as though her womanly eye saw things differently — only that they saw beyond the obvious, the routine as well as the spectacular mandated for by the discourse of exploration. She photographed women with children and drew attention to their bound feet not more than a few inches long (photograph). “Their poor little bound feet can’t travel quick enough,” she commented sadly. In another telling image, Janet was alert enough to capture the embarrassed half-smile of a middle-aged woman as she tried to hide her pipe from the camera. The woman’s daughters — one of them a bedecked bride — laughed heartily at their mother’s attempts at subterfuge. In both photographs, artistic composition is compromised in favour of the documentary value of the image.

All the while, Frederick managed his force of 30-odd persons — porters, guides, zoologists, scientists and the occasional recalcitrant camel, working late into the night, dealing with natural crises such as shortage of potable water, blinding dust storms and unexpected hail. He took copious notes, photographed fields, monasteries, lamas and peasants as the booty of specimens increased rapidly. The expedition traversed the Alashan desert for a period of over two months. It met Mongol royalty, was entertained by a number of British and American missionaries, narrowly escaped an attack by brigands and almost died of thirst on more than one occasion. Janet had been designated the expedition’s commissaire, a somewhat thankless task with diminishing supplies. When they reached the town of Wang Yeh Fu, it was time to develop the photographic haul of the last few days; Janet helped in the process while carefully building up an inventory of the negatives that has survived to this day. The couple spent three weeks in preparing more than 300 photographs that were sent back across the desert to Peking and on to Grosvenor’s desk. As they had found the makeshift darkroom method increasingly tiresome, Frederick asked his brother to send out an Abercrombie & Fitch portable darkroom. That it would take months to arrive seemed less of a trial than the stress of trying to make do in the desert.

When the National Geographic Central China Expedition returned to Paotow after nine months, it had covered 1,850 miles on horse and camel back, 700 by river and 1,000 by train. It had collected 1,000 species of plants that were then dispatched to the Philippines for restoration, a slightly larger number of bird and reptile skins and 150 mammal skins — and 1,800 photographs. Of these, only 350 found space in the National Geographic Society’s permanent archives; many others were lovingly preserved in a family collection to be handed over to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. The couple left China in 1924, never to return, and in 1929, Frederick suddenly divorced Janet on grounds of “absolute incompatibility of temperaments”. Janet was shattered; one cannot but wonder whether it was her independence of spirit, talent and creativity that led to Frederick’s unexpected decision.