Over the course of seven decades, Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries have reshaped how we see the natural world, shifting from colonial-era collecting trips to urgent calls for environmental action.
His storytelling has inspired generations, but has only recently begun to confront the scale of the ecological crisis. To understand how far nature broadcasting has come, it helps to return to where it started.
When Attenborough’s broadcasting career began in the 1950s, Austrian filmmakers Hans and Lotte Hass were already pushing the boundaries of what was possible by taking cameras below the sea and touring the world aboard their schooner, the Xafira.
