Brian Skerry can be called many things – explorer, journalist, conservation advocate – but he is first and foremost a photographer. His journeys to capture amazing underwater photographs have taken him across the world’s oceans. Photo: This Bahamian oceanic whitetip shark, known for the distinctive coloring on its white-tipped, rounded extremities, is part of a globally threatened species due to overfishing demands, primarily for its fins. (Photo by Brian Skerry)

“The most serious health problem in the U.S. today is obesity.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But that pronouncement about obesity’s primacy in the hierarchy of national health problems is not new. Rather, it’s the opening line to a remarkable article published 60 years ago in LIFE magazine. This photographs made by Martha Holmes to illustrate that March 1954 article, titled “The Plague of Overweight.” Photo: Dorothy Bradley (left), photographed for LIFE magazine article on obesity, 1949. (Photo by Martha Holmes/Time & Life Pictures)

Japanese hairdresser Megumi Takeichi cuts patterns into the hair of a camel ahead of the Bikaner Camel Festival in Bikaner in the western Indian state of Rajasthan on January 10, 2019. (Photo by Dinesh Gupta/AFP Photo)

Visitors are seen inside a newly opened bookstore in Chongqing, China on January 29, 2019. Covering an area of 1,400 square meters, the Zhongshuge Bookstore in Chongqing attracts readers with its creative decor. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

Iceland horses play on a meadow of a stud farm in Obernhain near Frankfurt, Germany, as the sun rises Thursday, July 23, 2020. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A surfer rides a large wave at El Bocal during the Vaca Gigante (Big Cow) giant wave surf competition in Santander, northern Spain December 17, 2016. (Photo by Vincent West/Reuters)

Brad Snead walks past melting ice on the Cook Inlet beach, Saturday, March 26, 2011, in Kenai, Alaska, while looking for agates. (AP Photo/Peninsula Clarion, M. Scott Moon)

Buildings in Lujiazui financial district are seen shrouded in fog amid an orange alert for heavy fog in Shanghai, China on January 31, 2024. (Photo by Xihao Jiang/Reuters)