Alan Taylor
Photo editor at The Atlantic. Former webdev. Former Alaska tour guide. Former farm kid. Elegant otter in a former life. kokogiak@gmail.com
- A Trip into Alaska’s Copper River Valley in 1902 - A collection of newly-digitized photos from the U.S. National Archives, giving a remarkable glimpse into daily life along a rough trail into the Alaskan interior, nearly 125 years ago. www.theatlantic.com/national/arc...
- A Trip into Alaska’s Copper River Valley in 1902 - A collection of newly-digitized photos from the U.S. National Archives, giving a remarkable glimpse into daily life along a rough trail into the Alaskan interior, nearly 125 years ago. www.theatlantic.com/national/arc...
- I'm excited that I've been able to move my photo stories at The Atlantic into a new and updated template (even bigger pictures) - and subscribers are now able to save them and share as gift links. Here's today's Photos of the Week, as a gift link: www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
- Winners of the GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2025 - 15 of this year's winning and honored photographs from this annual members-only photo competition, organized by the German Society for Nature Photography. theatln.tc/XRQ9iZI1
- The 35th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope - 12 amazing recent images from Hubble, which first reached orbit in April of 1990, and has since made nearly 1.7 million observations, according to NASA. theatln.tc/BH8ekA9y
- Photographing the Beauty of the North - On the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, I wanted to feature some of the remarkable work of AFP photographer Olivier Morin showing the people, animals, and landscapes of the Earth’s arctic and subarctic regions. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2025/0...
- Meet "Myaku-Myaku," official mascot of Osaka Expo 2025. Wikipedia says it has a "body composed of cells and water." Its designer: "Rather than smart or good-looking, I thought people would like a clumsy character." Special Skills: Transforming into various shapes and finding a rainbow after the rain
- Photos: Nationwide Protests Against Trump and Musk - Images from some of the hundreds of demonstrations held across the country, described by organizers as a “National Day of Action,” against the policies and actions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. theatln.tc/zlJak2EX
- From my day job: Search-and-Rescue Dogs at Work - 22 images of some of these amazing rescue dogs and their handlers, on the job and in training, from the past several years. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2025/0...
- Sharing from my day job, some incredible photojournalism here: Winners of the 2025 World Press Photo Contest Some of the winning entries of this year’s competition, selected from more than 59,300 entries. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2025/0...
- I'm happy to finally publish these amazing photographs by U.S. Army combat photographer Harold W. Clover, taken in the last weeks of WWII, as his unit and other Allies fighting the Nazis pushed from the French Alsace into Germany, then into Austria in 1945. theatln.tc/Y4bxtGlC
- “Not My President’s Day”: Thousands Gather in Protest Against Trump - 23 images of rallies across the U.S., protesting against President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, & what organizers call “the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration.” www.theatlantic.com/photo/2025/0...
- I loved today's photos, most courtesy of NASA's Don Pettit, astronaut, engineer, & photographer extraordinaire: Night on Earth, Seen From Orbit - 24 recent images from the International Space Station, showing the many colorful lights on the Earth's night side www.theatlantic.com/photo/2025/0...
- Posted at my day job: Superb Owl Sunday IX - A special Sunday event: my ninth annual photo collection celebrating these magnificent birds of prey. If you have some time today before the big game, I invite you to have a look. 🦉https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2025/02/superb-owl-sunday-ix/681624/
- I tried to come up with a worst Alan, but really am coming up blank - maybe Alan Smithee? I kept finding either footballers, or famous people like Alda, Cumming, Rickman, Tudyk, Arkin, Dean Foster, Moore, Alexander Milne, Jackson, Turing ... or the fictional Grant and Wake.
- Posted at my day job, I love these: Winners of the 2024 Close-Up Photographer of the Year - 21 of this year's winning and honored images in a contest that “celebrates close-up, macro, and micro photography.” www.theatlantic.com/photo/2025/0...
- Reposted by Alan TaylorTake a break from your regularly scheduled doomscrolling and marvel at this clip. A jawdropping feat of editing by Questlove - incredible!
- Reposted by Alan TaylorBeing a person with deadly, incurable cancer who is nonetheless still alive for an indefinite timeframe gives me an interesting metaphor that helps me deal with things like large-scale corruption in government or commerce. Bear with me for a second while I try to explain.
- Reposted by Alan TaylorMy neighbor Arthur made my childhood magical, and he died in the Palisades Fire. Here is my thank you to him, in @theatlantic.com: www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...
- Speeding recklessly through a forest in rural Washington State, trespassing, breaking-and-entering, theft of government property.
- Reposted by Alan TaylorThese extraordinary photos of the LA fires have been shared widely on social media, often without crediting the photographer. These are all the work of Ethan Swope, an LA-based photojournalist working for AP. You can follow his remarkable reporting here👇 www.instagram.com/ethanswopeph...
- I feel like this title is a euphemism, though I'm not quite sure what for: "Shouldering the Imitation Ox". From a 1909 book "Wild Nature's Ways", where a pair of wildlife photographers share tricks to get closer to wildlife, including blinds & stuffed animals. publicdomainreview.org/essay/stuffe...
- The world rushes past below, seen from aboard the ISS on December 23, 2024, somewhere above China (likely taken by astronaut Don Pettit, though I can't verify).
- Day 25 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: The Most Distant Known Galaxy. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have found a record-breaking distant galaxy observed just 290 million years after the Big Bang. Merry Christmas everyone! www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Day 24 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: An Energetic Stellar Nursery. This new image from the James Webb Space Telescope features the young star cluster NGC 602, near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light-years away. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Day 23 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Spray of Glowing Filaments. R Aquarii is a symbiotic binary star that lies roughly 700 light-years from Earth, surrounded by a large, dynamic nebula. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Day 22 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: The Edge of a Spiral. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Day 21 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Inside a Chaotic Nebula. Sharpless 2-106 is a nebula several light-years across, seen here by Hubble in 2011. It lies 2,000 light years away, in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way galaxy. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Day 20 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Galactic Chain. This Hubble image features the interacting galaxy system Arp-Madore 2105-332, about 200 million light-years away, aligned with several more-distant galaxies that form a sort of chain in the sky. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Day 19 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Beacon in the Clouds. This JWST image features a bright H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This nebula, known as N79 is a massive star-forming complex spanning roughly 1,630 light-years across. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Really grateful for the tireless efforts of so many to get to this point. It's a real accomplishment, and will create a solid foundation for years to come.
- Very excited about this. From the initial organizing of the union to the contract, some of us have been at this for almost six years. bsky.app/profile/news...
- Day 18 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: An Energetic Protostar. FS Tau is a multi-star system made up of FS Tau A, the bright object near center, and FS Tau B, the bright protostar to the far right, partially obscured by a dark lane of dust. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Amazed I'd never heard of Schnabelperchten before: "With a quiet 'Ga Ga Ga' they go from house to house & check... Woe to those who have not cleaned their houses... the Schnabelperchten will cut open their stomachs with long scissors & empty the rubbish into them!" www.raurisertal.at/en/raurisert...
- Day 17 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Gathering of Ancient Stars. Globular cluster NGC 2005, featured in this Hubble image, lies about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 162,000 light-years away from us. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
- Day 16 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A New View of a Distant Spiral. This image from JWST shows spiral galaxy NGC 628 in a new light, combining near- and mid-infrared light observations to reveal many previously-unseen intricate details. www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/1...
