DONNA KERKAM GROSVENOR

DONNA KERKAM GROSVENOR
PHOTOJOURNALIST & WASHINGTON, D.C. NATIVE
Donna K. Grosvenor, 82, passed away on Friday after a long illness at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Donna traveled the world from 1961 to 1977, photographing nature and exotic cultures for National Geographic with her first husband and lifelong friend, Gilbert M. Grosvenor. During those 16 years, she explored Monaco (1963), Kenya and Tanzania (1964), The Nile Valley (1965), Sri Lanka (1966), and Bali (1969). Other adventures included traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway. She specialized in animal portraits, a talent earning her magazine cover photographs of white tigers (1970) and pandas (1972). Donna was the first person to photograph Ling-Ling and Tsing-Tsing, when the famous pandas arrived in the United States in 1972 as a gift from China.
Donna's photograph of a Balinese dancer was selected as representative of human civilization for NASA's Voyager Spacecraft. The mission and photograph have now journeyed beyond Pluto, as a possible contact point for extraterrestrial life. The spacecraft will outlive planet Earth. Next year, the photograph will be featured in Halle Berry's new film, Mothership.
Donna also authored and made photographs for five children's books; Pandas (1973). Cats: The Little Tigers in Your House (1974), The Wild Ponies of Assateague Island (with James L. Stansfield, 1975), The Blue Whale (1977), and Zoo Babies (1978), all published by the National Geographic Society.
On assignment, she helped raise a baby white tiger, Rewati, at the Washington National Zoo. Her photograph of Rewati appeared on the cover of National Geographic.
More recently, with partner Christopher White, she published folios of photographs in Skipjack (2009), The Melting World (2013), and The Last Lobster (2018), all from St. Martin's Press. Donna helped with research and reporting for these three books in Maryland, Montana, and Maine.
For the last 30 years, Donna has taught a senior yoga class at the Santa Fe Community Yoga Center with a loyal following. She first offered yoga instruction in Annapolis, Maryland, in the 1980s, where she was the only game in town.
Donna grew up in the Wesley Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and attended cathedral school. Her father, John F. Kerkam, Sr., was a D.C. patent attorney; her mother, Eleanor Beck Kerkam, was from Memphis. Donna sang in the cathedral school glee club under the directorship of Richard Dirksen and performed with Joan Sutherland at the national cathedral. She graduated from Sweet Briar College with a major in English in 1960. In 1968, she attended the Missouri School of Journalism's Photographic Workshop, where her photo essay comprised following and photographing a country veterinarian. That assignment gave her the taste and skills for capturing animals in captivity and in the wild, on film, which carried her through her career.
Donna Grosvenor is survived by her partner of 40 years, Christopher White; her daughter, Dr. Lexi Grosvenor Eller of Salt Lake City; her son, Hovey Grosvenor of Bend, Oregon; three grandchildren, Samira Eller, 13, Wyatt Eller, 11, and Lilou Grosvenor, 11; ex-husband Gilbert Grosvenor of Hume, Virginia; and a brother, John F. Kerkam, Jr. of Leesburg, Virginia.
In lieu of flowers, please donate to Panthera, the charity for saving big cats in the wild worldwide.
Photograph of Donna Grosvenor and baby orangutan Agnes during photography at the Toronto Metro Zoo for Zoo Babies (1978).