How reading National Geographic magazine as a boy changed the life of Australian filmmaker and activist Craig Leeson
- Fascinated by nature and with a thirst for knowledge, Craig Leeson was given a subscription to National Geographic aged eight
- The magazine taught young Leeson about exploration, adventure, culture and inspired him to be filmmaker
Covering science, the environment, geography, history and culture in a distinctive photojournalistic format, National Geographic is one of the world’s most instantly recognisable and widely read magazines.
Australia-born, Hong Kong-based filmmaker, activist and entrepreneur Craig Leeson, best known for documentaries including A Plastic Ocean (2016) and The Last Glaciers (2022), tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.
My parents gave me a subscription to National Geographic magazine when I was about eight. I used to immerse myself in it, and it gave me an understanding of different places, cultures and wildlife.
As a child, I had a thirst for knowledge. It wasn’t reading that I enjoyed so much as the curiosity of finding things out. In those days there was no internet, so I had to read. There were two main sources for me: Encyclopaedia Britannica, particularly about wildlife, and National Geographic, which was more immediate, with what was happening in exploration, adventure, culture.
It told stories that would take me to a different place. I got a sense that there were all these amazing worlds elsewhere.