What a life! Casper’s Dean Conger spent decades as top National Geographic photographer

CASPER — Dean Conger fueled airplanes as a teen, hung out of airplane windows to capture news photos in his 20s, and then worked for National Geographic until retirement. Along the way, he captured some of the most historic and important moments of the times, such as an iconic photo of astronaut John Glenn with President John F. Kennedy.

The Casper native’s interest in looking at life through a lens began early with a Kodak Brownie camera as a boy. He would graduate to Leica Rangefinder cameras as a newspaper photojournalist, and then Nikon 35mm equipment using Kodachrome and Ektachrome slide film for the National Geographic Society.

Following his death on Sept. 7, 2023, the award-winning photojournalist left his career’s work of 100,000 unedited 35mm slides with his middle son and daughter-in-law, Kurt and Robyn Conger of The Dalles, Oregon. They are still figuring out how others could benefit from the huge trove of images.

Dean Conger was born Aug. 26, 1927, in Casper to Cecil and Bernice Conger. During the war years prior to his graduation from Natrona County High School in 1945, he worked part-time for the Casper Tribune-Herald. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1945, he became a sergeant and worked in darkrooms processing photos and X-rays. After his discharge, he attended Casper College and then the University of Wyoming, graduating in 1950.

In 1951, he was working for The Denver Post when a United Airlines Mainliner crashed into Crystal Mountain west of Fort Collins, Colorado. “I flew over the area and shot pictures for about a half an hour,” he told the Casper Tribune-Herald. “It looked like somebody busted a big bag of peanuts on the side of the mountain.”

In 1959, National Geographic called offering him a job. “She said the day that the National Geographic call was really a big day in their life,” Robyn Conger said of her mother-in-law’s recollection. “That’s not something you say ‘no’ to.” The 32-year-old Dean Conger flew to Washington, D.C., to begin a career that would take him to retirement in 1989.

Early assignments took him to Bulgaria, France and Cyprus. From Feb. 27 to March 7, 1960, he accompanied President Dwight D. Eisenhower on a South American tour to Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. In the early 1960s, he covered the Mercury space program, capturing an iconic photo of John Glenn riding in a limousine with President Kennedy after Glenn’s historic orbit of Earth. His photo of a helicopter hauling up astronaut Alan Shepard made the cover of Life Magazine on May 12, 1961.

He visited the Soviet Union numerous times, resulting in the 1977 book “Journey Across Russia: The Soviet Union Today.” He also spent time in Thailand during the Vietnam War and chronicled an evolving China. Dean Conger earned several awards, including Newspaper Photographer of the Year three times in the 1950s, Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1962 and the National Press Photographers Association Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in 1987.

“He always said that, ‘I was born 40 years too soon,'” Kurt Conger said. “He was just amazed at what digital photography could do.” On his deathbed, Robyn Conger recalled, he said, “I’ve had a great life, I’ve had a great family, and I have absolutely no regrets in what I’ve done.”