
On Thursday, May 28, 2026, 10:00 am – 11:30 am, Hybrid, Bert Fox, retired photo editor for the National Geographic (1996-2007) will present “Celebrating the First Ascent of Mt. Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay” at Clemson University’s Emeritus College 511 Westinghouse Rd, Pendleton, 29670. Open to the public so bring your friends and family!
Bert 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. Bert 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 DC, he directed the selecting, editing, and arranging of the visual content for the issue.
Bert Bio
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.













