Laura McPhee

Who is Laura McPhee?

Laura McPhee is an American photographer.

She is the daughter of award-winning author John McPhee and photographer Pryde Brown. Her siblings are novelists Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, and architectural historian Sarah McPhee.

McPhee considers her lifework is to "look at and understand the language of a place".

McPhee earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Princeton University in 1980, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986. McPhee was awarded a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship in 1998 for work in India and Sri Lanka and a residency in Idaho from Alturas Foundation 2003–2005. She was also awarded a New England Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 1995 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 1993.

Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others.

McPhee is a Professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design where she joined the faculty in 1986.