Faces of Exploration: Encounters with 50 Extraordinary Pioneers at Amazon
Resolution Creative

Setting herself up as a freelance photographer in 1997, Joanna began to explore the things that moved her. Her passion and curiosity took her to Eritrea to cover the tragic consequences of the war on the country's women. She returned to Israel time and again to portray the suffering in the Occupied Territories for Associated Press, at the same time pursuing photographic projects for charities such as the Red Cross, War Child and World Vision.

While on assignment in London in 1999 she met entrepreneur-cum-explorer Steve Brooks, an event that was to have a dramatic effect on both her life and her work. Steve would become Joanna's husband, but moreover he introduced her to the rarefied world of exploration. At the time Steve was planning the Ice Challenger expedition to traverse the Bering Strait, and as the project took shape Joanna began to experience first-hand the spirit and determination that motivates people like Steve Brooks to pursue their goals. 'I had thought that I could change the world with my photos,' she says now, 'but that was when I began to see a different side to the human spirit.' Three years later, when the project finally took to the ice, Joanna was on board as the expedition's official photographer, covering it for GQ, Men's Journal and Associated Press.

Joanna and Steve were married soon after Ice Challenger, but that first taste of the danger and excitement that are the lifeblood of the explorer led Joanna to suggest that, by way of a honeymoon, she and Steve, with the help of a friend, fly their Robinson 44 helicopter from the North Pole, where it had been left, to the South Pole. What started as a rather exotic holiday turned into 2003's Pole To Pole expedition, a unique, impromptu - and almost catastrophic - journey halfway around the globe in a two man helicopter that is now the subject of a forthcoming TV documentary that Joanna is planning to turn into her second book over the coming year.

That extraordinary drive and commitment that is unique to the explorer had kindled an insatiable curiosity in her, and she began to wonder how she might combine her photography with a growing interest in this exclusive club of men and women. As she spent more time among the Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorer's Club, hearing inspirational stories from celebrated adventurers, the idea for her Faces of Exploration book began to take shape. 'I was meeting the most incredible people,' she recalls. 'You'd go to an event and end up sitting in a room with Buzz Aldrin or Steve Fossett, hearing amazing stories of that motivational spirit being used in the most inspirational way.'

The past four years have been spent putting Faces Of Exploration together, a labour of love that involved tracking down, photographing and interviewing 50 of the world's most remarkable pioneers, while continuing to work freelance for the likes of National Geographic Magazine, NikonPro Magazine and the British press. Along the way she found the time to have two children, set up a photographic imaging service and complete an MA in Anthropology and Development.

As Faces Of Exploration finally becomes a reality, Joanna has turned her attention back to the Pole To Pole book project which she hopes to publish next year. Meanwhile, having moved into a new house in Cornwall with her young family, she has begun to pursue more child-friendly work. A recent interiors shoot for Living Etc magazine has led her to start planning a book on Coastal Interiors, while a photographic project on the work of urban midwives is also in the pipeline.