Robert Caputo, prolific photographer, author, and filmmaker, has died at 76

Robert Caputo was captivated by the pure world, its animals and folks. So he spent 35 years, from 1970 via 2005, touring via Africa, Asia, and South America, taking photographs, writing tales, and making movies and TV exhibits for National Geographic journal, Time, PBS, TNT, and different media retailers.

From Kenya to Egypt, Venezuela to Zanzibar, in China, Cuba, New Orleans, and Boston, Mr. Caputo chronicled the wonder and tragedy of on a regular basis life. He reported as a freelancer, with a digital camera and a notepad, for National Geographic for many years, masking political coups, civil wars, and famines in Sudan and Somalia, and the AIDS epidemic in Uganda.

He labored for photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick in Tanzania within the Seventies after which camera-stalked lions and leopards for National Geographic on the Serengeti Plain. He despatched again hanging pictures of the Abu Simbel Temples in Egypt and the previous Kingdom of Mustang in Nepal.

In Sudan, he sipped tea with camel merchants, slept below the celebrities, and posed for portraits with tribal chiefs. He trekked the Himalayas and photographed fishermen on the Congo, Nile, and Mississippi Rivers. His poignant August 1993 cowl photograph for National Geographic of a ravenous Somali girl gained worldwide consideration.

“In fact, it is a great job,” Mr. Caputo instructed the Washington Post in 1995, when he was featured in a TV present concerning the Geographic photographers. “You really do get to go places and do things others only dream about.”

He instructed the New York Daily News in 1995: “I’ve always thought of my job as a license to be nosy.”

In 2002, as he was winding down his worldwide journey, Mr. Caputo moved from Washington, D.C., to a farmhouse in Kennett Square, Chester County. In early 2025, he was identified with Alzheimer’s illness. In December, he and his household traveled to the Pegasos Swiss Association voluntary assisted dying middle in Basel, Switzerland. He died Thursday, Dec. 18. He was 76.

“Fairly early on, Bob had expressed his wishes to go out on his own terms,” stated his spouse, Amy. “We were able to honestly and pragmatically deal with our situation, and he remained his thoughtful self, with his sense of humor intact till the end.”

Mr. Caputo first went to Africa in 1970. He dropped out of Trinity College in Connecticut as a senior and meandered with buddies throughout the huge continent, from Morocco to Tanzania.

He returned to earn a bachelor’s diploma in movie at New York University in 1976. Then, till 1979, he lived in Nairobi, Kenya, and offered photographs and tales about Africa to Time, Life, and different magazines.

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“He liked to learn about things,” stated his son Nick. “He was constantly inquiring into things.”

In 1981, National Geographic employed him to report from Sudan on the verge of its civil battle, and he produced hanging cowl photographs, dramatic image spreads, and detailed tales about Africa. In 1984 and ’85, he spent eight months and traveled 4,000 miles on steamboats, tugboats, and all-terrain automobiles to doc conventional each day life alongside the Nile.

“Everywhere he went,” his household stated, “Bob found that the people he met were fundamentally good and generous, happy to share their often limited food with him, a perfect stranger, and excited to tell him about their lives.”

There have been challenges, too, he stated in lots of interviews. He was detained by border guards in Uganda in 1979 and contracted malaria 9 occasions. The monthslong assignments seeking distant Indigenous folks have been usually lonely, and he obtained hungry and drained.

But the connections he made with folks he encountered have been value it, he stated. “The great advantage of working for National Geographic is having time,” he instructed the New York Daily News. “You can go to a village in Africa and not just have to waltz in and start shooting away. You can spend time getting to know people, and they can know you.”

Mr. Caputo was a pure innovator and trainer, and he organized photograph workshops and lectured about images all over the world. He taught digital images on the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University and cofounded Aurora & Quanta Productions in Maine in 1985 and the PixBoomBa.com photograph web site in 2010.

National Geographic revealed his Photography Field Guide in 1999 and Ultimate Field Guide to Landscape Photography in 2007. He additionally authored photo essay books on the Nile and African wildlife, and exhibited his photographs on the Delaware Museum of Nature and Science and elsewhere.

He wrote and appeared in wildlife exhibits, hosted TV packages and YouTube videos about images, and wrote the story on which Glory & Honor, a 1998 award-winning TV movie, is predicated. He made movies about making movies in Nigeria and the historical past of Boston’s Fenway Park.

He earned awards from the National Press Photographers Association, the American Travel Writers Foundation, Communications Arts journal, and different teams. He was personable and energetic, colleagues stated, and he cofounded the annual National Geographic Prom on the Washington workplace.

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“He was a tremendously caring and loving person,” his son Nick stated. “He looked out for other people.”

Mr. Caputo met TV and movie producer Amy Wray on a National Geographic TV shoot within the Amazon rainforest. They married in 1997 and had sons Nick and Matt.

In Facebook tributes, buddies and colleagues famous his “wonderful smile” and “deep love of people and animals.” They referred to as him a “legend” and “amazing.” Robert J. Rosenthal, former Africa correspondent and former govt editor of The Inquirer, called Mr. Caputo “one of the best humans I ever knew.”

Mr. Caputo told MainLine Today in 2009: “My personal heroes are the people who work for aid organizations and nongovernmental organizations, who go to some faraway place to help people they’re not related to and often put themselves in harm’s way.”

Robert Anthony Caputo was born Jan. 15, 1949, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. His father was a profession Marine and moved the household to bases in Virginia after which Sweden for an task on the U.S. embassy there.

In a 1991 interview with the Newhouse News Service, Mr. Caputo stated: “I remember as a kid going to sleep listening to artillery going off in the distance down at the range. It was kind of comforting. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

He attended a Swedish center college, discovered the language, skied, and performed soccer. He returned to the United States within the late Nineteen Sixties to attend boarding college in Virginia after which Trinity.

In Kennett Square, Mr. Caputo was a soccer, baseball, and basketball coach to his sons, and a Cub Scouts chief. He walked the boys to the varsity bus cease within the morning. He instructed them bedtime tales about secret brokers and pirates, they stated, and constructed a tree home within the yard.

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He embellished his truck on Halloween and grew spectacular gardens. His neighbors referred to as him Farmer Bob.

He took his household on journeys to Kenya and Tanzania. He dabbled in experimental playwriting and literature when he was younger, and loved traditional films and William Blake’s poetry.

“He felt extraordinarily lucky to have lived the life he did,” his spouse stated, “full of adventure, family and friends. And in the end he said, ‘I’m ready.’”

In addition to his spouse and sons, Mr. Caputo is survived by a sister and different family.

Services are to be at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 10, at Kennett Friends Meeting, 125 W. Sickle St., Kennett Square, Pa. 19348.

Donations in his identify could also be made to Doctors Without Borders, Box 5030, Hagerstown, Md. 21741.