LaVoy, Merl

Dates:

Birth 1886

Death 1953

Active 1910

Active 1920

Biographical notes:

Merl LaVoy, one of the first internationally famous news photographers, was born in 1886. He was a Wisconsin native, but after his parents died when he was still a young boy, LaVoy moved to Oregon to live with his uncle. In 1907, LaVoy worked for the Great Northern Development Company, which was prospecting for copper on the Kotsina River in Alaska. In 1910, LaVoy agreed to join Herschel Parker and Belmore Browne as an expedition photographer for their 1912 hike of Mt. McKinley (the highest peak in North America, also known as Denali) in Alaska. This trip marked the beginning of his professional pursuit of photography; he subsequently marketed his Alaskan photographs to newspapers and magazines, and soon established himself as a photographer, documentary film maker, and cameraman for Pathé News, a British company that produced documentaries, newsreels, and cinemagazines (1910-1970). He also traveled across Europe to document World War I. During the 1920s, he carried out a detailed photographic study of native Alaskan life. LaVoy died in 1953 in South Africa, where he was working as a freelance photographer.