The Emeritus College will host a presentation from retired National Geographic photo editor Bert Fox on Thursday, May 28, 2026, from 10-11:30 a.m. Fox will present “Celebrating the First Ascent of Mt. Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay” at the Emeritus College office on 511 Westinghouse Rd. in Pendleton.
The presentation will also be available on Zoom (email emerituscollege@clemson.edu for the link). Visitors are asked to park in the lot accessed by Lebanon Road.
Fox will discuss producing the visual content for National Geographic Magazine’s 50th anniversary edition celebrating the first ascent of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Fox was responsible for the entire visual production of the May 2003 issue of the magazine. His fieldwork included travel to New Zealand to meet Sir Edmund Hillary, and to Nepal to retrace the British trek to the summit and contact several Sherpa families. Upon his return to National Geographic’s offices in Washington D.C., he directed the selecting, editing and arranging of the visual content for the issue.
Bert Fox biography
Bert Fox was a photo editor for National Geographic from 1996-2007, during which time he edited the visual content for over 100 stories from ideas to print – procuring, negotiating contracts, overseeing work, editing the photographs, and selecting those that would be included in the magazine. Bert began his 40+ year career as a newspaper photographer. He was a photo editor and Sunday Magazine art director at the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1982-1996. Over the course of his career, he was a five-time winner of the prestigious “Photo Editor of the Year” prize awarded by the University of Missouri and National Press Photographers Association in their “Pictures of the Year” International competition. In 2007, he and his wife Nanine Hartzenbusch moved to Charlotte to raise their son Charles, and they relocated to the Upstate in 2019.
