Luis Marden (bornAnnibale Luigi Paragallo) (January 25, 1913 – March 3, 2003) was an American photographer, explorer, writer, filmmaker, diver, navigator, and linguist who worked forNational Geographic Magazine. He worked as a photographer and reporter before serving as chief of theNational Geographic foreign editorial staff. He was a pioneer in the use ofcolor photography, both on land and underwater, and also made many discoveries in the world of science.

Though he officially retired in 1976, Marden continued to write occasional stories. In total, he wrote more than 60 articles for the magazine.

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Born inChelsea, Massachusetts, ofItalian heritage, Marden went by the nameLouis Paragallo while growing up in nearbyQuincy. Marden was introduced to photography at a chemistry class while attendingQuincy Senior High School. His interest was intense and lasting. In 1932, at the age of 19, he wrote a book calledColor Photography with the Miniature Camera, which may be the first book ever published on 35mm color photography.

Marden began his career at theWMEX radio station in the Boston area, where he had a photography program called Camera Club of the Air. On his station manager's recommendation, he changed his name toLuis Marden, his newsurname a random selection from aphone book. He then worked as a freelance photographer forThe Boston Herald.

His expertise in color photography subsequently brought him toNational Geographic magazine, where he was officially hired on July 23, 1934. The magazine prided itself on publishing quality color photography, and Marden was making good use of a lightweightLeica, which could hang from a single neck strap. Marden persuaded the magazine to see the benefits of using the small35mm cameras loaded with the newKodachrome film over the bulky cameras withtripods andglass plates that were being used by the magazine's photographers at the time.

Marden's first assignment as a reporter was in theYucatán Peninsula. After sailing on atramp steamer, Marden explored the peninsula with aModel T Ford. He then acquired amule.

Marden died of complications fromParkinson's disease inArlington, Virginia, at the age of 90.

• In 1941 he dove offAntigua, where he saw his firstcoral reef. Marden's knowledge ofSpanish led to his appointment duringWorld War II asNational Geographic's "Latin America man," and Marden was sent on assignments throughoutCentral America, most notably InNicaragua, which he visited for almost an entire month in mid July 1944, thenSouth America, and theCaribbean.
• Deciding he wanted to photograph the riches of the deep, Marden worked withJacques Cousteau aboard theCalypso in the mid-1950s. A pioneer ofunderwater color photography, Marden developed many techniques in this field that are still used today, such as the use of filters and auxiliary lighting in order to enhance color.
• Marden and fellowNational Geographic photographerBates Littlehales suffereddecompression sickness after diving in the Cenote Xlacah, the holyMayanwell atDzibilchaltun in the Yucatán. An attempt to treat Marden with an improvisedrecompression chamber at a power plant inMérida failed, and the two men were airlifted toPanama City, Florida, where they were successfully treated at theNavy Mine Defense Laboratory.^[1]
• Marden discovered the remains ofCaptain Bligh'sHMS Bounty in January 1957. After spotting a rudder from this ship in amuseum onFiji, he persuaded his editors to let him dive offPitcairn Island, where the rudder had been recovered. Despite the warnings of one islander—"Man, you gwen be dead as a hatchet!"^[2]—Marden dived for several days in the dangerous swells near the island and found the remains of the fabled ship. He subsequently met withMarlon Brando to counsel him on his role asFletcher Christian in the 1962 filmMutiny on the Bounty. Later in life, when he stuck with his tailored English suits while his colleagues wore more casual attire, Marden also worecuff links made of nails from theBounty.MGM had a reconstruction of theBounty built for their 1962 film, also namedBounty. This vessel was built, of wood, to the original plans, in a traditional manner in ashipyard inLunenburg, Nova Scotia. However, all the dimensions were increased by approximately one third to accommodate the large cameras in use at that time.
• At the island ofTofua (Bligh spelled itTofoa), Bligh and 18 loyalists had sought refuge in a cave in order to augment their meager provisions. In the March 1968 issue of theNational Geographic Magazine, Marden claimed to have found this cave as well as the grave of John Norton, a crewman stoned to the death by the Tofuans. Both findings were later disproved byBengt Danielsson (who had been a member of the 1947Kon-Tiki expedition) in the June 1985 issue of thePacific Islands Monthly. Danielsson identified Bligh's cave as lying on the sheltered northwest coast, where Bligh identified it; Marden's cave lies on the exposed southeast coast. Additionally, Danielsson thought it highly unlikely that the Tofuans would have allotted any grave site to Norton, or that the grave, if allotted, would have been preserved for two centuries.^[3]
• For the October 1985 story "In Bounty's Wake: Finding the Wreck of the HMS Pandora," Marden dove off the coast ofCape York Peninsula,Australia, in 1984 to cover the wreck ofHMS Pandora, the ship sent to capture theBounty mutineers.Pandora had foundered on an Australian reef with manacled prisoners still inside a deckhouse cell.^[4]

In 1986 Marden and his wife Ethel Cox Marden, who was trained as amathematician, attempted to replot the route they believedChristopher Columbus must have taken across theAtlantic. Though officially retired, Marden set sail from theCanary Islands to retrace Columbus's voyage to theNew World. The Mardens concluded that Columbus made his first landfall—Columbus's "Guanahani"—atSamana Cay, not atSan Salvador Island, also posited as Columbus's landfall, arguing that Columbus had landed much farther south than was initially believed.

As a teenager, Marden had taught himself at least fivelanguages as well asEgyptian hieroglyphs and later studied many others. His office is reported to have had stacks ofdictionaries and grammars in different languages, includingTahitian,Fijian,Latin,Spanish,French,Italian,Danish,Arabic,Tongan,Turkish, andMāori^[5] Marden is cited as an authority inWebster's Third New International Dictionary for words such as "snick," "tot," and "sevillana."

Marden was an avidfly-fisherman, which led to his interest inbamboo, of which finerfly rods are made. This love led him to the bamboo groves ofChina'sGuangdong, thereby becoming, in 1974, the firstNational Geographic representative since theCommunist Revolution of 1949 to return to this country. Marden observed and photographed the cultivation and processing of Tonkin bamboo in its restricted growing area in southern China.

This assignment produced the article "Bamboo, The Giant Grass" (1980). "Raw material for implements of peace and war, this botanical cousin torice,corn, andKentucky bluegrass may be the world's most useful plant," Marden would write.^[6] Marden also recounted the under-the-table maneuverings he engaged in for entry to Maoist China.

Marden made his own bamboo fishing rods. In 1997, he published his second book,The Angler's Bamboo, which not only describes the cultivation and processing of Tonkin bamboo, but also traces the history of the split-bamboo fishing rod.^[7]

• Marden worked forNASA for a time, taking innovative photographs ofrocket launches and the activities of theProject Mercury astronauts.
• He was a founding member of theSea Research Society and served on its board of advisers. In 1972 he participated in the creation of the research/professional degree ofdoctor of marine histories.
• He also made 11travelogue films for the Society's lecture series.
• In the early 1990s, he flewultralight aircraft. Marden owned and piloted a Quicksilver MX from Whitman's Strip, a small airport in the Virginia countryside.

Marden served as chief of theNational Geographic foreign editorial staff, in which capacity he met and maintained friendships withKing Hussein of Jordan and theKing of Tonga and was knighted by theItalian government.

Marden and his wife, Ethel Cox Marden, lived in "Fontinalis" (also known asMarden House), a house overlooking thePotomac built byFrank Lloyd Wright between 1952 and 1959. The spot had caught Marden's eye in 1944 when he and his wife and had been fishing forhickory shad (Alosa mediocris) along the Potomac, nearChain Bridge. After purchasing a plot of land, Marden continued the correspondence he had maintained with Wright since 1940, asking the architect to design a home for them. In 1938 Marden had seen a "dream house" inLife that Wright had designed for the typical American family.

It was not until 1952 that the designs from Wright finally came. The house is a flat-roofed,cinderblock home trimmed inmahogany that curves into the side of a hill; it comes to an abrupt point upriver, like thebow of a boat. "Our beautiful house ... stands proudly just under the brow of the hill, looking down always on the rushing water which constantly sings to it, day and night, winter and summer," Ethel wrote to Wright in 1959.^[8]

After Marden moved to a nursing home in 1998, the house was purchased and refurbished byJim Kimsey, co-founder ofAOL, in 2000 for $2.5 million.

• Credited with the discovery of the remains of theHMS Bounty off the coast of Bounty Bay,Pitcairn Island, in January 1957
• TheNational Geographic Society inWashington holds a specimen of anAepyornis egg that was discovered by Marden in 1967 inMadagascar. The specimen is intact and contains an embryonic skeleton of the unborn bird.
• Discovered theorchidEpistephium mardenii inBrazil. Described in Marden's April 1971 article on orchids, "The Exquisite Orchids." The name is actually a synonym forEpistephium duckei.^[9]
• Discovered a deepwaterlobsterparasite deep in the Atlantic that was a new species ofcrustacean, later calledDolobrotus mardeni (Amphipoda order,Gammaridea suborder,Eusiridae family).^[10]
• His reporting of asea anemone in theRed Sea flashing different colors became the first published report of submarine or underwater fluorescence.^[11]

• The orchid speciesEpistephium mardenii
• The sea fleaDolobrotus mardeni

• National Geographic Magazine Article
• National Geographic News: National Geographic Icon Luis Marden Dies
• Luis Marden, Adventurer & Journalist
• Peter Beers: Luis Marden House
• Master Apprentice
• Annie Gowen, “The Wright Way,”Washington Post, August 2005

• 1913 births
• 2003 deaths
• 20th-century American explorers
• American people of Italian descent
• 20th-century American photographers
• American underwater divers
• Deaths from Parkinson's disease in Virginia
• National Geographic photographers
• People from Quincy, Massachusetts
• American underwater photographers
• National Geographic people

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