Speaking
BE HERE: Photography, Attention, and the Power of Seeing
After twenty-five years photographing stories for National Geographic, Amy Toensing has learned that the most important part of making a photograph has nothing to do with the camera. Through entertaining, humorous, and meaningful stories from the field, audiences experience the journey behind making a photograph: knocking on doors, sitting at kitchen tables, riding in the passenger seat, getting there early, staying late. The slow, uncertain work of earning trust.
The talk reveals how the camera becomes not a technical tool but a way of being in the world — a practice of attention that illuminates what's right in front of us. And it makes the case that this kind of seeing doesn't require a camera or a distant assignment. It can begin anywhere — even in our own backyards.
Past Talks
National Geographic Photography Leads to Adoption
Stories from the Stage · 2024
On a National Geographic assignment in northern Australia, Amy rides out a harrowing boat crossing to photograph ancient rock art. But the picture that matters most is a snapshot her husband makes on a beach at the end of the trip. It would never run in the magazine, and years later, it would change their lives.
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We Could Lose the Oldest Culture on Our Planet
TEDxCarnegieLake · 2015
Aboriginal culture was already tens of thousands of years old when the pyramids were built. Drawing on years of photographing Aboriginal communities, Amy shows daily life today, the deep tie to ancestral homelands, and the lasting harm of colonial policies like the Stolen Generations. She makes the case for protecting the world’s oldest living culture before it’s lost.
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The Aboriginal Homeland
National Geographic Live · 2014
The story behind Amy’s four-year assignment documenting the oldest continuous culture on Earth. Through her friendship with elders Jack and Lily, who leapt from a hunter-gatherer life to colonization in a single generation, she shows what dispossession has cost Aboriginal communities. She also talks about what it took to earn their trust as an outsider, and why she set out to tell a story of survival rather than tragedy.
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