National Geographic was waiting for Susan Potter to die.
So was Dr. Victor Spitzer, director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
And so was Susan Potter herself.
Her death in 2015 culminated in the magazine’s longest-ever project, “Susan Potter Will Live Forever,” which took 16 years from pitch to publication. It debuted online last week.
Those involved in the story of her unique body donation, from doctors to medical school students to the journalists themselves, all seem to agree that Potter lasted far beyond her original self-imposed year-to-live deadline, because she found something worth living for: dying.
Third editor’s the charm
A few weeks into Susan Goldberg’s tenure as editor-in-chief of National Geographic Magazine, senior science photo editor Kurt Mutchler approached her about a budget line: “visual human.” It was 2014, and this was the third editor in chief he’d explained the story to — a story that the magazine had now been working on for a decade.
The gist: A woman in Colorado had agreed to donate her body to a unique cadaver imaging project, and along the way inserted herself into the process. She’d befriended medical students, needled the director of the project for not calling her more, and insisted on an intimate tour of the facility where she’d eventually be frozen and sliced into bits.
This cross section is of Potter’s head, encased in polyvinyl alcohol for stability. It shows her brain, eyes, and nose as the skull is sliced, from the top down, in the cryomacrotome, as Spitzer calls the milling machine. Potter’s sectioning into 27,000 slices took 60 workdays to complete.
Mutchler needed to know: Would Goldberg remain committed to following Susan Potter’s story until the end?
She didn’t hesitate.
“After all the years of covering her, (we) spent a lot of time with Susan Potter, the living person,” Goldberg said. “I think we’ve got a picture of her in life and in death that, in many ways, both are really high resolution. We understand her, and her motives and why she was doing it, and I don’t think we usually get that with stories about cadavers.”
In the beginning
The story idea came to the magazine from Spitzer, the doctor who would eventually take possession of Potter’s cadaver, freeze her, quarter her and cut into her 27,000 slices. His department would photograph every cut to create a “visual human”: a high-res, 3-D database for the medical community.
At the time he pitched the idea in 2002, Potter was very much alive. Originally, she told those involved that she doubted she’d live more than a year. But she lived another decade-plus, theoretically in part because her involvement in the imaging program gave her a new lease on life.
Being a donor to Spitzer’s project revitalized Potter. She “adopted” some University of Colorado medical students, met with them periodically, and here, attended their graduation. Several developed a strong attachment; others found her too demanding. (Photo by Lynn Johnson/National Geographic)
The magnetic board
Just as Susan Potter hung around, so did the words “visual human” on the National Geographic budget. Goldberg said that while the magazine does have a fairly sophisticated digital budgeting process, there’s also an analog way the magazine tracks stories.
Inside the main conference room of the National Geographic building, there’s an old map on the wall, embossed on a raised panel. Under that panel is a massive, tri-folded magnetic storyboard, where photos and slugs let editors know what the magazine’s future holds.
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- Inside National Geographic’s headquarters, this map unfolds into a story budget.
“You open this map of the world and it reveals this board. It’s really amazing,” Goldberg said. “I couldn’t believe it when I got here; I thought it was just the most magical thing.”
Susan Potter’s budget line hung around as a little typed label on a magnet on that board for 16 years.
The magnet and the donor were just there, waiting.
Staying committed
All the while, Mutchler never gave up on the assignment.
“It became a story about commitment, too,” Mutchler said. “(Spitzer) had made this promise to (Potter) that he would complete this project and in turn, we had the same commitment. We said that we would pursue this to its conclusion.”
Journalist Cathy Newman didn’t write about Potter as if she was a hero.
“I think what we want to do in every case when we tell a story is to tell the real story,” Goldberg said. “Susan Potter was a difficult person. … There are very few perfect people in the world. We want to tell the story of the whole person, and the way she was in life probably had a lot to do with why she wanted to do this and why she stuck with it all these many years.”
One of the challenges was making sure that what originated as a print story became a digital one.
“We were able to tell this story in so many more ways than we would have been able to tell it 16 years ago,” Goldberg said. National Geographic had a website 16 years ago, but that was about it. Now, the package includes an 18-minute documentary , an Instagram story, and a digital editorial display full of photos.
“We created amazing content across our digital platforms and that really allows people to see what these students are going to be able to see with this virtual cadaver. I don’t think people have ever seen a picture of the human body like this before.”
Mutchler said the photographers weren’t even using digital cameras when the story started (the magazine went digital around 2006).
“We stuck with our original concept, which was to document living life in black and white, and then have her virtual life, her second life, if you will, in color,” he said.
Goldberg said one remarkable aspect of this piece was that the editorial personnel didn’t change for this story: the writer, the editor, the photographer and the photo editor all were the original team.
“The only thing that changed is that you had three separate editors-in-chief of the magazine during that time,” Goldberg laughed.
16 years in the making
Even in death, Potter’s journey to immortality continues.
The story was finally published as part of a full issue on the future of medicine. It made sense for Susan Potter’s editorial debut, though her imaging by Dr. Spitzer is only partially finished with the painstaking process.
The plan is to follow the project until she’s entirely imaged.
“As her whole body is slowly is brought to life as an avatar, really,” Goldberg said.
Mutchler said his favorite photo from the series features Potter’s frozen upper quarter sitting on a lab table, like a bust, seemingly gazing at Dr. Spitzer.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mutchler said of the photo.
“That’s one of the things that National Geographic has been doing for 130 years — showing people things that they would never get to see otherwise,” Goldberg said. “This is one of those kinds of stories.”
Photographer Lynn Johnson was involved in the magazine’s last time-consuming feature, “Katie’s New Face,” which took two years to tell. Johnson spoke about her work in this story with Poynter earlier this year.
“(It) speaks to how important time is, to telling good stories, and how we are kind of losing that in today’s journalism world,” Mutchler said.
