SXSWORLD

SXSW.COM | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 7 | SXS W O R L D 1 1  After years of trying, thanks partly to his contacts in the climbing community, Richards eventually received an assignment from National Geographic: taking shots for a one-page article about the effort to clean up trash left behind on Mount Everest. Once he was on the magazine's roster, more assignments followed.  Richards has been to all seven continents, shooting expeditions to Antarctic glaciers, African river deltas, Nepalese caves and much more. He accepts and seeks out the most challenging assign- ments and expeditions. In 2011, he became the first American to climb any of the world's vaunted 8,000-plus meter peaks in winter, summiting Pakistan's Gasherbrum II in life-threatening tempera- tures and filming it all for a documentary short simply called Cold.  On the descent, he and his two companions survived an ava- lanche that could have killed them. Richards filmed the whole ordeal, turning his camera on himself for a wrenching selfie showing his staggering relief to be alive, his pain and his dazed bewilderment. The photo became a National Geographic cover and a famous image in mountaineering, but long untreated post-trau- matic stress disorder from the near-death experience resounded in his life, precipitating an end to his marriage. It's in ways like this that the reality of traveling nine months out of every year, often to trying environments, does not always match the romance.  "It's extremely hard," Richards said. "There's a huge sense of dis- association and despondency. It can be very lonely, it can extremely taxing … I'm comfortable traveling because I have to be, but I'm not always comfortable emotionally in that constant motion."  Why then, does Richards push himself so hard? Especially, why does he risk his life in daring mountain climbs? It's not about an adrenaline rush, but instead, he says, mental exercise.  "The importance of doing that is to understand our own capaci- ties," he said. "Quite often, we think we aren't capable … but that's not true, really, ever, and that's a pertinent lesson right now: that we need to believe massively in ourselves."  That's also why, when Richards struggles up a mountainside, he always brings a camera with him. "The point for me is to tell that larger story of struggle and how deep we can go," he said. "Those moments in between the chest-thumping summit goals, when you see exhaustion, fear, questioning ... those are the important things, and the rest is just kind of bullshit."  Wherever he travels and whatever he is shooting, from the melting ice caps to migrating wildlife, to people living and struggling all over the world, Richards seeks to convey our interconnectedness: "My photography, I hope, is representative of the fact that we are all tied together. We think of ourselves as apart from the natural world, and the big shift in our thinking needs to be that we are a part of a human family and a global ecosystem."  Portraying and then overcoming hardship has tremendous value, too. "Everyone thinks pushing your comfort zone has to be this big deal," Richards emphasizes. "But it's not. It's going out of our way to talk to someone we don't know. It's stomaching the discomfort of turning off our phone and talking to someone. Those things push us, and we're not used to it anymore."  "You can go out and climb a mountain," he concludes. "But you can also just say: 'Yesterday, I ran for 30 minutes; today I can run for 35.' It's important to extend ourselves as much as we can." Cory Richards is a 2017 SXSW Conference Keynote (Interactive). 11/11/2016 11/11/2016 11/11/2016 February 17,377 30,020 10,892 23,382 4,235 6,288 15,127 29,670 1,250 1,250 16,377 29,920 17,377 30,020 92.37% 99.16% 250 250 "Quite often, we think we aren't capable … but that's not true, really, ever, … we need to believe massively in ourselves."

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