Laura McPhee

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.

Early life and education Laura McPhee grew up in central New Jersey, 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.

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.

Work McPhee is noted for her large-scale photographs of landscapes and portraits of people who live and work in them.

Exhibitions 1994 – Photographer's Gallery, London, England 2007 – River of No Return, Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID, 2007 (solo) Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho 2008 – Two Canyons, Two Years Later, Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, MA 2008 – River of No Return, Gail Gibson Gallery, Seattle WA 2011 – When We Talk About Love, Carroll & Sons, Boston, MA 2012 – Push - G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA 2012 – Looking Back at Earth: Contemporary Environmental Photography from the Hood Museum of Art's Collection, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 2015 – The Home and the World: a View of Calcutta, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID 2018 – Ansel Adams in Our Time, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 2019 – Women Take the Floor, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 2020 – Mirage: Energy, Water and Creativity in the Great Basin, Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID 2020 – Loosely Stated, ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica, CA 2021 – What We Do in The Shadows, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA 2021 – Ansel Adams in Our Time, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR 2021 – The Expanded Landscape, The Getty, Los Angeles, CA

Publications

Publications authored by Laura McPhee 1998 - No Ordinary Land, Laura McPhee and Virginia Beahan, Aperture 2000 - Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits, Laura McPhee, Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, Random House 2008 - River of No Return, Laura McPhee, Yale University Press 2009 - Guardians of Solitude, Laura McPhee, 2011 - Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park, 2014 - The Home and the World: A View of Calcutta, Laura McPhee, Yale University Press 2018 - Eye on the West: Photography and the Contemporary West, George Miles, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300232851 2018 - The Photographer in the Garden, Sarah Anne McNear, Jamie M. Allen, Aperture, ISBN 9781597113731

Grants and awards 1980 – Page Award for Exceptional Achievement in the Visual Arts, Princeton University 2004, 2009 – Massachusetts College of Art and Design Faculty Fellowship