Laura McPhee

Last updated
Laura McPhee
BornJune 8, 1958
Known for Photography
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholars Fellowship, New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
Website lauramcphee.com

Laura McPhee (born 1958) is an American photographer known for making detailed large-format photographs of the cultural landscape. Her images raise questions about human effects on the environment and the nature of humankind's complex and contested relationship to the earth. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Laura McPhee grew up in central New Jersey, [2] the oldest daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee and photographer Pryde Brown. She had three younger sisters, novelists Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee; and architectural historian, Sarah McPhee.

After her parents divorced, her mother married Dan Sullivan, a therapist. They had a daughter Joan together. She is CEO of the Partnership for LA Schools.

The new blended family included five step-siblings from her stepfather's first marriage. Together they lived on a 50-acre farm in New Jersey.

McPhee earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Princeton University in 1980, and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986.

Career

She is a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. [3] [4]

Some of her achievements include a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship to work in India and Sri Lanka, a residency in the Sawtooth Valley of central Idaho from the Alturas Foundation, a New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Getty Center, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. [5]

Work

McPhee is noted for her large-scale photographs of landscapes and portraits of people who live and work in them. [2] McPhee's work is concerned with place and the ways we define and manage our relationship to the land. McPhee's work has been exhibited both in the United States and abroad.

Her body of work River of No Return was exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2006 and at Kansas City's Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in 2013. A monograph of the same title was published by Yale University Press in 2008. Her first monograph, No Ordinary Land (in collaboration with Virginia Beahan) was published by Aperture in 1998. [2]

McPhee's most recent book, The Home and the World: A View of Calcutta (2014), explores the weight of colonialism through images of the architecture of that city and portraits of passersby. It was published by Yale University Press. Alan Thomas wrote about this work in Places Journal. [6]

Exhibitions

Publications

Publications authored by Laura McPhee

Publications including photographs by Laura McPhee

Grants and awards

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References

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  6. 1 2 Thomas, Alan; McPhee, Laura (2014-12-08). "Across the Threshold: Laura McPhee's Calcutta". Places Journal (2014). doi: 10.22269/141208 .
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Laura McPhee - 51 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 2018-04-04.
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  10. Boulanger, S (2006). "Laura McPhee: River of No Return at the Museum of Fine Arts".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
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  12. "CARROLL AND SONS ART GALLERY". www.carrollandsons.net. Retrieved 2018-04-04.
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  14. Knudsen, Stephen (6 July 2013). "Laura McPhee: River of No Return". Huffington Post.
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  22. George, Alice Rose; Heyman, Abigail; Hoffman, Ethan (1992). Flesh & blood: photographers' images of their own families. Manchester, UK; New York: Cornerhouse Publications; Picture Project. ISBN   9780948797224. OCLC   27742785.
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