McPhee, Laura

Laura McPhee (born 1958) is an American photographer. She is the daughter of literary journalist John McPhee (born 1931) and his first wife, photographer Pryde Brown (born 1935). She is also the sister of novelist Jenny McPhee, novelist Martha McPhee, and architectural historian Sarah McPhee. Following Pryde Brown's marriage to psychologist Dan Sullivan in 1969, the McPhee children grew up on a farm outside of Princeton, New Jersey, with their younger half-sister, Joan Sullivan, and their stepfather's children from his first marriage.

McPhee graduated with 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. Her work, which ranges from portrait to landscape to still life, is widely exhibited nationally and internationally. Her monographs and other books include No Ordinary Land (1998), Girls: Ordinary Girls And Their Extraordinary Pursuits (2000), River Of No Return (2008), Guardians Of Solitude (2009), Gateway: Visions For An Urban National Park (2011), and The Home And The World: A View Of Calcutta (2014).

She has been a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design since 1986. She has been the recipient of a number of grants and residencies, including a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship for work in India and Sri Lanka, and a residency in Idaho from the Alturas Foundation. She was also awarded a New England Foundation for the Arts fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.

McPhee married experimental filmmaker, documentarian, and teacher Mark LaPore (1952-2005), with whom she had a daugher, Isobel McPhee. Laura McPhee lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.